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comment by mk

Fair enough. Makes sense.

But what I don’t understand, is once Bernie was out, why not choose Hillary over Trump? Trump is probably going to do damage that could be permanent, like exiting climate talks for example. There is a huge difference between the two. I have a five year old daughter, and I don’t want her to even see or listen to him. He’s an incompetent racist misogynistic fool. Why no impetus to keep him away from the Whitehouse?

BTW I fault Hillary for not begging Bernie to be VP. That ticket would have been a lock.





Rook  ·  2238 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I mean, don't get me wrong, "President Trump" is like a Stephen King character or something. I don't like him.

On a personal note, though, I grew up in what was probably the most institutionally liberal place and time to ever exist - the East San Francisco Bay Area in the last part of the last century. I was raised with progressive values which I hold dear. However, I have seen over and over again how easy it is to twist those values into something that looks more like a conservative religion than a society with freedom of thought and conscience. So I have a real leeriness of what looks like entrenched dogma, and to me that was what Clinton and the DNC represented.

But you actually do speak to some of my hopefulness when you talk about the question of "permanent damage". Not that I want permanent damage! Let me explain:

I think Trump is doing damage, yes. However, I actually think that the benefit of it may be in its very impermanence.

As someone who wants systemic reform, I think this presidency is showing us where we are weak. Showing which systems are too easy to corrupt or destroy, challenging entrenched views, and exposing cultural rifts. If society is a social organism, then the function of pain is to indicate damage. And much of that damage was already there... Trump is just exacerbating it.

Barring the possibility that left-wing fervor drives the center towards the right in the next election, we won't have Trump for much longer. But we will have the legacy of being shaken up and shown what we need to fix.

The most truly lasting damage I think he has already inflicted is in diminishing America's presence as the global hegemon... but even in the case of things like climate change, this may drive other nations to take action of their own accord without relying on the United States, and I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

ThurberMingus  ·  2237 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    But you actually do speak to some of my hopefulness when you talk about the question of "permanent damage". Not that I want permanent damage!

Let's not jump off a balcony to see whether our ankles or knees are weaker.

I think you are to optimistic about 2020. Look at the kind of people who get elected: if America is rolling on the ground with a broken ankle some are definitely going to exploit that for personal gain. And if "now that we see the weak points we'll fix them" was a valid assessment, we wouldn't have elected Donnie at all.