Some Important Voices Today

There are many important statements being made this week. Here are a few of the comments we're picking up on. Two come from local people. We are often contradicting ourselves and working at cross purposes in these days, and there is an unfortunate rush to blame rather than to do analysis. The contradictions will be worked out in practice and over time, I think.

First:

I gave Trump a chance. It was called the election. He had and took numerous opportunities to communicate to me. They might have been nuanced and thoughtful and expressed in ways that would lead me to think I might not agree with him but that he will be careful in how he proceeds and try not to hurt people.

What he actually did was express vile ideas with crude hostility to large categories of persons who deserve better, that include people I love and wider circles of friends and comrades, and that are hurtful to me in attacking the kinds of community I want to live in. Additionally, numbers of his policies attack my own material interests. Most specifically, his attack on the ACA probably means I will not be able to afford health insurance when he's done and the tax credits for the individual market are gone. So even as a white straight male intellectual of the professional middle class I have skin in the game for myself in resisting him.

He is of and for the billionaire class, with all that entails, and I am not waiting to voice my opposition to everything that he has so vigorously promised.

I want his program to fail.

I want his vileness to fail.

I want his presidency to fail, based on what he has loudly said he wants it to be.

Second:

To be clear, I will not donate a single cent to replacing broken windows in the Pearl District, nor will I tactic shame those who broke them.

My focus is organizing to protect the vulnerable, but remember riots really are the language of the unheard, as Dr. King said (inconveniently for his liberal whitewashing fans). Also, violence is something that happens to people, not property.

It's not that liberals oppose violence. They've just outsourced their violence to the pig cops and to the military, and they don't want to be reminded of the atrocities committed on their behalf. Even when they end up on the business end of the same police state they've empowered. Liberalism is a bankrupt ideology that has no analysis and no solutions except accepting defeat.

Third:

I've seen a lot of posts calling for unity. I've tracked that they have only come from other white people in my life.

My question to anyone who has posted something like that is: unity for what purpose, to what end?

If you want to unify to fight back against the kind of world where Bannon gets an appointment like this, I'm in. Because there is no "give Trump a chance" after this decision.

If you want to unify against the Hate crimes happening across the country, Paul Ryan's plan to gut Medicare and Medicaid, the destruction of the environment, I'm in.

I'm only interested in the kind of unity where we as white people have to take some risks. Where we know we are only accomplishing something when we feel uncomfortable, pushed out of our safety zone. Where we have the same sadness, anger and fight in us two months from now as we do today. Where we know when to step back and let others lead.

If you are in my life, expect me to raise these kind of questions and conversations moving forward.