Monday, October 17th, 2016
Stephan: When I look at this election what I see at this point is the Great Schism Trend coming to a head. I think Trump is going to lose, deserves to lose, is a psychopathic fraud, but I don't think that is the leverage point issue. That has moved into the short term future. For me the issue now is what happens beginning November 9th.
I think the concerns about Hillary Clinton's institutional centrism have been effectively handled. The Bernie Effect, the Elizabeth Warren Effect supported by the revelations in the emails that are being leaked will require Clinton to take a socially progressive path. Perhaps considerably more than she would have chosen if that option were viable, but it is not. And she is a pragmatist above all.
The next gate we have to get through is whether the Democrats take the Senate. If that happens the Supreme Court will be more compassionate and life-affirming, and will take a proactive view of laws in light of climate change. Taxes will be increased on the utra-wealthy, minimum wage will go up, and health care may finally get handled. That's the wellbeing path. But, and it's a big But...
For me the trend to watch is what happens in the next eight years with the nativist roaring boys of the Caucasian, racist, gun-toting Theocratic Right. I say eight years, two terms because by then the effects of climate change will be clear enough to make denial a comedic position socially condemned. Like using what has come to be called -- a social convention worth noting -- the "N" word. Also the shift to electric power solar and wind generated will be so far along, much as computers were adopted, as to have a majority constituency. But the next eight years...
The problem has been made immeasurably more complicated because of the abysmal performance of corporate media. Part of the meme of "the election is rigged" is that the media is compromised. It has been, but not in the way the way Donald Trump is pedaling it, and the Trumpists believe.
I don't Trump is running for President anymore. I think he knows he is going to lose and the questions is: How do I turn the ≈42% of America that has supported me in spite of everything that has come out, that has made me judgment proof in a way into a political party, supported by interlocking private business and so I can make a lot of money, and bite my thumb at all my critics?" The answer to that question I think will require him to stoke these nativist racist fires; that would put us in a very dangerous place.
This story of the largest and oldest newspaper in Arizona, The Republic, is a cautionary tale to be taken very seriously.
On Sunday, the head of an Arizona newspaper that endorsed Hillary Clinton revealed some of the threats that she and her staff have received from angry Trump supporters and resolved to stand firm.
Republic Media president Mi-Ai Parrish spoke to CNN Money’s Jill Disis about the backlash the Arizona Republic newspaper has weathered since it endorsed Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“We’re being targeted … it’s not the America I know. It’s not the democracy I love,” she said.
“As someone who has spent a career in the business of words, it’s unusual to find myself speechless,” Parrish wrote in an op-ed published this weekend. “What is the correct response, really, to this?”
She then published some of the hateful phrases that have been directed at her and the Republic staff since the traditionally conservative newspaper declined to endorse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump:
YOU’RE DEAD. WATCH YOUR BACK.
WE WILL BURN YOU DOWN.
YOU SHOULD BE PUT IN FRONT OF A FIRING SQUAD AS A TRAITOR.
The newspaper, said CNN, has been deluged with threatening calls. Some […]