Altogether, by preemptively victimizing himself, Trump is simply amplifying a climate of "illegitimacy" that has had some sway for some time, but particularly since the election of Obama. Trump was perhaps the most well known, but certainly not the only "birther," for whom no amount of evidence would convince them that he really was a native citizen and qualified to run for the presidency. He has occupied the ironically named white house "illegitimately" for eight years. If Clinton wins, she too will occupy the white house "illegitimately," and there is a segment of the American population who will believe the claims. Although the media will be dutifully reporting the trumpeted claims of "rigging" and "fraud," and for the sake of balance will no doubt also dutifully report the election commission's debunking of the claim, none of it is to be trusted. The mainstream media -- the Clinton News Network -- conspires against them. It will do no good to challenge results in the courts because the courts too are conspiring against them. And, unfortunately, "Trump’s words are having an effect. Just 38 percent of Trump supporters believe their votes will be counted accurately; and only 49 percent of all registered voters are “very confident” their votes will be tabulated without error, according to a Pew Research survey last week." If one believes we have been living under an "illegitimate" government for the past eight years, if one believe we are facing the prospect of living under an "illegitimate" government for another four years at least, what to do?
This is not small potatoes. As Stokol reports,
Among the values most necessary for a functioning democracy is the peaceful transition of power that’s gone on uninterrupted since 1797. What enables that is the acceptance of the election’s outcome by the losers,” said Steve Schmidt, the GOP operative who was John McCain’s campaign strategist in 2008.
“Here you have a candidate after a terrible three weeks, which has all been self-inflicted, saying the only way we lose is if it’s ‘rigged’ or stolen — in a media culture where people increasingly don’t buy into generally accepted facts and turn to places to have their opinions validated where there’s no wall between extreme and mainstream positions. That’s an assault on some of the pillars that undergird our system. People need to understand just how radical a departure this is from the mean of American politics.”
It bears repeating that "acceptance of the election's outcome by the losers" is what differentiates the US democracy from many of the second and third world "experiments" in secular democracy. Although the ins-and-outs are complex, as a bottom line, the recent coup in Turkey should stand as a reminder of what happens when a significant segment of the population views the "elected" leadership as "illegitimate." We are, one hopes, are not quite Turkey, but we are working ourselves in that direction, and Trump's not-so-sarcastic suggestion that the 2nd Amendment People might have a solution to the election of Clinton and her Supreme Court picks isn't far from suggesting an armed coup. Perhaps I exaggerate. I don't know.
Consider this, a recent Breitbart news article has the headline: "NY Post Columnist: Media’s Attacks on Trump Show ‘Collapse’ of U.S. Journalism." It is an aggregated column by Michael Goodwin, which essentially makes the point that "The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America. The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent." One might almost concede the point. Although they did publish an open letter by Jerry Falwell Jr., saying Trump is the Churchillian leader we need, the Washington Post has been clear on their view Trump. They have called him "A Unique Threat to American Democracy," and most of their editorial content is clearly anti-Trump. If there is a partisan slant to the NY Times and the Washington Post, there is the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post, which, of course, have a conservative bias, the latter having given Michael Goodwin his voice to decry the collapse of US Journalism. There is more than a whiff of the tabloid about the Post, however, and there is the question of the "audience" to which they appeal. There is, however, no question about the audience that the "alt-right" media, like Brietbart News. As a "cultural exercise," it is useful to read the comments and Michael Goodwin's article drew many comments like this from the Breitbart audience:
The Old Media WILL die. They have been outed as a rancid pack of liars, fully as untrustworthy as any used-car salesman, as sleazy as middle-aged men trying to sell swampland as prime real estate to old widows. They are Democrat operatives pretending to be journalists. The National Enquirer has actually been more trustworthy this election season than CNN and their fellow travelers. Their words are meaningless gibberish, and no one should take them at their word ever again.
I doubt that Aitch748 will be convinced of anything, except what he (I assume it's a he) already believes. Anything else, of course! is a lie. I am surprised at how resilient some of the old McCarthy-style language has proven to be -- the communist's "fellow travelers" have now become CNN's fellow travelers -- which lends some credence to those who fear that the Trump-style language will prove to be resilient as well. Perhaps even more resilient. American democracy weathered the storm of McCarthy, in part because a "trusted" media outlet and a "trusted" media figure called him out. There no longer is a "trusted" media outlet and there certainly is no Edward R. Murrow to call him out.
So far as the "rigged" election is concerned, consider this: "Obama: ‘Of Course the Election Will Not Be Rigged — What Does That Mean?’" Obama makes what might be called the standard response against "rigged" elections. As he points out, "the federal government doesn’t run the election process. It is states, cities, and communities all across the country. They are the ones who set up the voting systems and voting booths." This is true, and while it points to the possibility of "local" fraud, which if suspected can be contested by election commissions and the courts, but it also points to the near impossibility of fraud on a national level. As Obama goes on to point out, "If Mr. Trump is suggesting that there is a conspiracy theory that is being propagated across the country, including in places like Texas, where typically it is not Democrats who are in charge of voting booths, that is ridiculous. That does not make any sense. I don’t think anybody would take that seriously.” On the latter score, of course, he's wrong. Here again, as a "cultural exercise," consider this comment:
Sad truth is the establishment does everything it can to rig these things, tries to suppress the votes of our soldiers and ignore questionable actions of their chosen ones at the same time the liberal news media is also part of it with their own activities, their bogus polls favoring their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton in this case and liberal candidates and issues in general as well while at the same time making in like vultures at every perceived weakness of candidates they don't like, I speak from experience they never give republicans an even break not even 'moderates' but we have the American people and that is where we need to play.
My apologies for Michael Ryan's "stream of consciousness" and lack of punctuation, but his (I assume it's a he) comment is still clear enough. The vote will be rigged and the media will assist in the cover up. Here again, I'm not sure what can be said to convince Michael otherwise, and because it is Obama speaking, it is yet another occasion for racially tinged invective against Obama's legitimacy. As foreverflag put it, "of course they are rigged how the hell do you think you won idiot with your black power buddies outside the polls. You can only fool the morons that follow you like sheep." Once again, I'm not sure there's anything I can say that would convince foreverflag of much of anything.
I'm merely suggesting that, if Donald Trump loses, there will be those who believe it impossible, literally impossible, that he lost fair and square, among them perhaps Donald Trump himself. I am also suggesting that, perhaps, they are not the most benign segment of our population. There have been various reports of Trump rallies that do not paint a pacific picture. Jared Yates Sexton, for example, writes for the New Republic (admittedly a liberal leaning publication) that "in Greensboro, North Carolina, Hillary Clinton was called a “bitch” more times that I could count. “Trump That Bitch” was the most common refrain. They shouted it from the rafters, wore T-shirts emblazoned with it. But at a rally in Raleigh on Tuesday night, a new cry rang out: 'Hang that bitch!'” One probably shouldn't be surprised that Sexton received death threats for his efforts from the various on-line trolls. One need only read the comment section of Breitbart to have some sense of the violence roiling beneath the surface of American life, much of it racially motivated, much of it couched in the language of what? a hyper-patriotism? Sexton writes that
the last time I heard someone calling for the death of a politician was at a Tea Party informational meeting at the Greene County Fairgrounds outside Bloomfield, Indiana, back when Obamacare was still a dirty word. Speakers equated President Barack Obama with Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. They alluded to the Great Famine and the Great Purge. If Obama had his way, they argued, we should all be ready to report to work camps. After the presentation, I listened to farmers and factory workers alike wonder whether to take up arms and march on Washington. If the time had come, as one speaker put it, to “refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.”
Of course, neither the great famine nor the great purge occurred, and I'm still waiting for the work camps, but the same sort of hyper-ethno-nationalism comes is revealed when supporters suggest that Clinton should be shot for "high treason." Here again, perhaps even more blatantly, the figures and language that animated the culture wars of the 60s and early 70s reappear, with the allusions to Mao and Stalin, and the signs that read "The Silent Majority Stands with Trump" bringing to mind the backlash that brought Nixon to office.
The silent majority is anything but silent, and as several have noted, they are not likely to go away if Trump loses the election. With the appointment of Bannon, there's some speculation that Trump is REALLY not running for president, but setting himself up to create a media empire, one no doubt more blatantly ethno-nationalist than Fox News. Whether or not that's true, I won't speculate, but it is certain that the media outlets that have mounted a consistent and relentless campaign against Obama will not let up once Clinton is in office. Indeed, insofar as Obama came into office relatively untainted by scandal, Clinton comes into office pre-scandaled. The moral taint surrounding her husband will remain, and has already taken a nasty turn for the worse with t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Clinton Sucks, But Not Like Monica." The "carelessness" taint surrounding her will remain, along with the perpetual reminders of Benghazi and her email, with each new revelation giving occasion for a rehashing of the hash. Then too, there is the "foundation," with its own set of emails and potential scandals. The "investigations" into Clinton will never stop, and so, again, she will come into office already "illegitimate" in the minds of many. As John Sprinklebumj commented on an article entitled "Donald Trump Calls for 'Expedited Investigation by a Special Prosecutor:"
Yes, and Hillary has the e-mail scandal. a lawsuit from a Benghazi family and prosecutors investigating the Clinton FoundationS. There are more than one. Perhaps play for pay while Secretary of State is among the more damning politically. Trump is not perfect, but he is not a habitual liar and crook, and he is not a serial sexual predator. You cannot say the same about the Clintons. Moreover, Hillary, once again, has not been honest about her health and it will come out, despite her laughing off health questions and having no news conference for over 200 days.
Then too, she will need to actually "govern." If she follows through on her liberal agenda, she will be damned by the right. If she fails to follow through on her liberal agenda, she will be damned both by the left for her failures and by the right for trying. The right will fall back into the new normal, an ever more hyper-ethno-nationalism of roiling resentments, among which will be an even deeper suspicion of the government because clearly and obviously the whole damn election was rigged from the outset -- how "the hell do you think the bitch won, idiot!"
There are a couple of responses to this, and I have to admit that I find myself viscerally, if not intellectually, torn. At a visceral level, my response is equal and opposite. We should, that is, "refresh the tree of liberty" not with the blood of the various vilified groups, not with the blood of Obama or Clinton, but with the blood of all those ethno-nationalists calling for blood. Of course, feeling that way makes me deeply sad, not only for myself, but for my country. I most assuredly do not want to feel an urge to violence, and to be honest, I feel anger not only at the content of the provocations of the likes of foreverflag, but at the very fact that I am being provoked to an anger that I find repugnant and counter-productive. I simply want them to engage in civil discourse and, if they can't, to "shut the f**k up."
They won't, and so I find myself engaged in a detached and hermetic intellectual endeavor to understand what we are up against as a country. I suspect that Andrew Sullivan came up against a similar dilemma when he suggested that we are facing an excess of democracy. While the internet has allowed America to speak its mind very openly, it has become apparent that much of what America has to say isn't worth hearing, at least not on the surface, though I suspect the current election cycle will provide a generation of historians with fodder for discussion of our racial attitudes, among other things. As Astra Taylor put it, "In May, in a widely circulated cover story in New York, Andrew Sullivan expressed misgivings that America is suffering from too much democracy ... Leaning heavily on Plato, who remains one of democracy’s most scathing critics, Sullivan argued that 'hyperdemocratic' society was eroding vital 'barriers between the popular will and the exercise of power.'” Part of Sullivan's anxiety was fueled by the rise of Trump, or perhaps more accurately, by the sentiments revealed by the rise of Trump. Taylor goes on to write that "the wave of anxiety began with the unbearable prospect of a President Trump. The notion of a racist, demented reality-TV star occupying the nation’s highest office has caused an increasing number of people—left, right, and center—to question the decision-making capacities of the masses." And so, again, as Taylor put it, "the crowd is quickly being reconfigured back into its historical double, the mob. And the hive is increasingly viewed, by liberals and conservatives alike, as a hornet’s nest, a threat to democracy itself." I may simply be showing my biases, but the left's vituperation nowhere matches that on the right. Read the comment section of any conservative web site, and it's hard NOT to feel that one has stumbled into a hornet's nest. Case in point, as Devil Dog has said before, "polls, polls, polls...all BS cooked up the clinton owned media...one day she is behind...then for the next two weeks....oh my.....lookie there....she just jumped over 20 points....ohhh she is soooo deeply loved by America!! My arse!!" This is not someone who will concede defeat.
On the one hand, I find myself agreeing with Sullivan and others, like Traub, who feel that "it's not about the left vs. the right; it's about the same vs. the mindlessly angry," and it may well be time for the "elites to rise up against the ignorant masses." It depends, however, on just who that elite might be, doesnt it? As Sexton put it, I’ve spent a good deal of my time on the 2016 campaign trail trying to empathize with the Donald Trump supporter. ... They have, after all, been manipulated for at least the past 50 years to vote against their interests" distracted all the while by "wedge issues and social crusades [that] have persuaded them to forget their checkbooks and pledge support to a Republican Party that has promised to protect them from The Other, whether that’s been African-Americans, homosexuals, or feminists." They have, in other words, colluded in their own marginalization. So, on the other hand, however, I also find myself agreeing with Taylor, who concludes that
In reality, our political system is far less democratic than it was a generation ago. Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen unions crushed, welfare gutted, higher education defunded, prisons packed to overflowing, voting rights curbed, and the rich made steadily richer while wages stagnated. It’s not the frustration of the people that should terrify us, but rather the legitimate sources of their frustration, which have so long gone unaddressed. Regular citizens struggling to make ends meet have almost nowhere to turn, nothing to join. We shouldn’t wonder that so many voters have seized on this election to make a statement, even a nihilistic one.
Her point, however, may be lost on too many who have colluded too long in their own marginalization. To say, "we've seen unions crushed" would not be seen as a problem by Scott Walker or most neo-liberals. To say, we've seen "welfare gutted" would not be seen as a problem except by those wanting a "free ride" on the government dole. To say, we've seen "higher education defunded" would garner cheers by many who see the professoriate as a haven for left wing radicals intent on destroying what is best about America. To say "prisons are packed to overflowing" would elicit a cheer particularly if one of the cells was to be occupied by "crooked Hillary." To say "voting rights curbed" is peachy fine, particularly if it allows us to take our country back from those blacks and browns who have illegitimately usurped power through voter fraud. While racial attitudes are recalcitrant, however, the real issue remains the money. Neither the left or the right seems willing and/or able to address the reality that the "rich are made steadily richer while wages have (for the most part) stagnated." Perhaps it's not the frustration of the people that should terrify us, but the way in which those frustrations are expressed matters. The mob, we know, is all to ready to find a scapegoat, and while Clinton at some level may be as crooked as the day is long, at least her campaign slogan is "stronger together." I'm not sure how we come to that, but I am terrified by the prospect of Trump winning and only slightly less terrified by the prospect of him losing and failing to graciously concede. The alt right media will amplify the resentment and the anger, and none of that bodes well for the future of this country.
I'm merely suggesting that, if Donald Trump loses, there will be those who believe it impossible, literally impossible, that he lost fair and square, among them perhaps Donald Trump himself. I am also suggesting that, perhaps, they are not the most benign segment of our population. There have been various reports of Trump rallies that do not paint a pacific picture. Jared Yates Sexton, for example, writes for the New Republic (admittedly a liberal leaning publication) that "in Greensboro, North Carolina, Hillary Clinton was called a “bitch” more times that I could count. “Trump That Bitch” was the most common refrain. They shouted it from the rafters, wore T-shirts emblazoned with it. But at a rally in Raleigh on Tuesday night, a new cry rang out: 'Hang that bitch!'” One probably shouldn't be surprised that Sexton received death threats for his efforts from the various on-line trolls. One need only read the comment section of Breitbart to have some sense of the violence roiling beneath the surface of American life, much of it racially motivated, much of it couched in the language of what? a hyper-patriotism? Sexton writes that
the last time I heard someone calling for the death of a politician was at a Tea Party informational meeting at the Greene County Fairgrounds outside Bloomfield, Indiana, back when Obamacare was still a dirty word. Speakers equated President Barack Obama with Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin. They alluded to the Great Famine and the Great Purge. If Obama had his way, they argued, we should all be ready to report to work camps. After the presentation, I listened to farmers and factory workers alike wonder whether to take up arms and march on Washington. If the time had come, as one speaker put it, to “refresh the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants.”
Of course, neither the great famine nor the great purge occurred, and I'm still waiting for the work camps, but the same sort of hyper-ethno-nationalism comes is revealed when supporters suggest that Clinton should be shot for "high treason." Here again, perhaps even more blatantly, the figures and language that animated the culture wars of the 60s and early 70s reappear, with the allusions to Mao and Stalin, and the signs that read "The Silent Majority Stands with Trump" bringing to mind the backlash that brought Nixon to office.
The silent majority is anything but silent, and as several have noted, they are not likely to go away if Trump loses the election. With the appointment of Bannon, there's some speculation that Trump is REALLY not running for president, but setting himself up to create a media empire, one no doubt more blatantly ethno-nationalist than Fox News. Whether or not that's true, I won't speculate, but it is certain that the media outlets that have mounted a consistent and relentless campaign against Obama will not let up once Clinton is in office. Indeed, insofar as Obama came into office relatively untainted by scandal, Clinton comes into office pre-scandaled. The moral taint surrounding her husband will remain, and has already taken a nasty turn for the worse with t-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Clinton Sucks, But Not Like Monica." The "carelessness" taint surrounding her will remain, along with the perpetual reminders of Benghazi and her email, with each new revelation giving occasion for a rehashing of the hash. Then too, there is the "foundation," with its own set of emails and potential scandals. The "investigations" into Clinton will never stop, and so, again, she will come into office already "illegitimate" in the minds of many. As John Sprinklebumj commented on an article entitled "Donald Trump Calls for 'Expedited Investigation by a Special Prosecutor:"
Yes, and Hillary has the e-mail scandal. a lawsuit from a Benghazi family and prosecutors investigating the Clinton FoundationS. There are more than one. Perhaps play for pay while Secretary of State is among the more damning politically. Trump is not perfect, but he is not a habitual liar and crook, and he is not a serial sexual predator. You cannot say the same about the Clintons. Moreover, Hillary, once again, has not been honest about her health and it will come out, despite her laughing off health questions and having no news conference for over 200 days.
Then too, she will need to actually "govern." If she follows through on her liberal agenda, she will be damned by the right. If she fails to follow through on her liberal agenda, she will be damned both by the left for her failures and by the right for trying. The right will fall back into the new normal, an ever more hyper-ethno-nationalism of roiling resentments, among which will be an even deeper suspicion of the government because clearly and obviously the whole damn election was rigged from the outset -- how "the hell do you think the bitch won, idiot!"
There are a couple of responses to this, and I have to admit that I find myself viscerally, if not intellectually, torn. At a visceral level, my response is equal and opposite. We should, that is, "refresh the tree of liberty" not with the blood of the various vilified groups, not with the blood of Obama or Clinton, but with the blood of all those ethno-nationalists calling for blood. Of course, feeling that way makes me deeply sad, not only for myself, but for my country. I most assuredly do not want to feel an urge to violence, and to be honest, I feel anger not only at the content of the provocations of the likes of foreverflag, but at the very fact that I am being provoked to an anger that I find repugnant and counter-productive. I simply want them to engage in civil discourse and, if they can't, to "shut the f**k up."
They won't, and so I find myself engaged in a detached and hermetic intellectual endeavor to understand what we are up against as a country. I suspect that Andrew Sullivan came up against a similar dilemma when he suggested that we are facing an excess of democracy. While the internet has allowed America to speak its mind very openly, it has become apparent that much of what America has to say isn't worth hearing, at least not on the surface, though I suspect the current election cycle will provide a generation of historians with fodder for discussion of our racial attitudes, among other things. As Astra Taylor put it, "In May, in a widely circulated cover story in New York, Andrew Sullivan expressed misgivings that America is suffering from too much democracy ... Leaning heavily on Plato, who remains one of democracy’s most scathing critics, Sullivan argued that 'hyperdemocratic' society was eroding vital 'barriers between the popular will and the exercise of power.'” Part of Sullivan's anxiety was fueled by the rise of Trump, or perhaps more accurately, by the sentiments revealed by the rise of Trump. Taylor goes on to write that "the wave of anxiety began with the unbearable prospect of a President Trump. The notion of a racist, demented reality-TV star occupying the nation’s highest office has caused an increasing number of people—left, right, and center—to question the decision-making capacities of the masses." And so, again, as Taylor put it, "the crowd is quickly being reconfigured back into its historical double, the mob. And the hive is increasingly viewed, by liberals and conservatives alike, as a hornet’s nest, a threat to democracy itself." I may simply be showing my biases, but the left's vituperation nowhere matches that on the right. Read the comment section of any conservative web site, and it's hard NOT to feel that one has stumbled into a hornet's nest. Case in point, as Devil Dog has said before, "polls, polls, polls...all BS cooked up the clinton owned media...one day she is behind...then for the next two weeks....oh my.....lookie there....she just jumped over 20 points....ohhh she is soooo deeply loved by America!! My arse!!" This is not someone who will concede defeat.
On the one hand, I find myself agreeing with Sullivan and others, like Traub, who feel that "it's not about the left vs. the right; it's about the same vs. the mindlessly angry," and it may well be time for the "elites to rise up against the ignorant masses." It depends, however, on just who that elite might be, doesnt it? As Sexton put it, I’ve spent a good deal of my time on the 2016 campaign trail trying to empathize with the Donald Trump supporter. ... They have, after all, been manipulated for at least the past 50 years to vote against their interests" distracted all the while by "wedge issues and social crusades [that] have persuaded them to forget their checkbooks and pledge support to a Republican Party that has promised to protect them from The Other, whether that’s been African-Americans, homosexuals, or feminists." They have, in other words, colluded in their own marginalization. So, on the other hand, however, I also find myself agreeing with Taylor, who concludes that
In reality, our political system is far less democratic than it was a generation ago. Over the past 40 years, we’ve seen unions crushed, welfare gutted, higher education defunded, prisons packed to overflowing, voting rights curbed, and the rich made steadily richer while wages stagnated. It’s not the frustration of the people that should terrify us, but rather the legitimate sources of their frustration, which have so long gone unaddressed. Regular citizens struggling to make ends meet have almost nowhere to turn, nothing to join. We shouldn’t wonder that so many voters have seized on this election to make a statement, even a nihilistic one.
Her point, however, may be lost on too many who have colluded too long in their own marginalization. To say, "we've seen unions crushed" would not be seen as a problem by Scott Walker or most neo-liberals. To say, we've seen "welfare gutted" would not be seen as a problem except by those wanting a "free ride" on the government dole. To say, we've seen "higher education defunded" would garner cheers by many who see the professoriate as a haven for left wing radicals intent on destroying what is best about America. To say "prisons are packed to overflowing" would elicit a cheer particularly if one of the cells was to be occupied by "crooked Hillary." To say "voting rights curbed" is peachy fine, particularly if it allows us to take our country back from those blacks and browns who have illegitimately usurped power through voter fraud. While racial attitudes are recalcitrant, however, the real issue remains the money. Neither the left or the right seems willing and/or able to address the reality that the "rich are made steadily richer while wages have (for the most part) stagnated." Perhaps it's not the frustration of the people that should terrify us, but the way in which those frustrations are expressed matters. The mob, we know, is all to ready to find a scapegoat, and while Clinton at some level may be as crooked as the day is long, at least her campaign slogan is "stronger together." I'm not sure how we come to that, but I am terrified by the prospect of Trump winning and only slightly less terrified by the prospect of him losing and failing to graciously concede. The alt right media will amplify the resentment and the anger, and none of that bodes well for the future of this country.
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