The Schadenfreude I'm feeling...
...is intense. Not joy, but a feeling of deep relief.
Kind of like the feeling you'd get if you witnessed some really bad person, whom you have long felt tremendously threatened by, is stopped cold from continuing to threaten you by someone you don't like either, but who threatens you less.
As many here are quite aware, I have never used the word hate to describe my feelings toward Hillary Clinton, but only FEAR. My fear has always been great, because I have long been familiar with her dispositions on foreign policy, and I fear an ascendancy of pro-military sentiment within the Democratic Party more than anything else at this point.
Hillary did something to my perceptions of the Dem Party corporate elite that I was not expecting a year ago. I went from feeling that they were a bunch of misguided 'way too smart for their own good' people who were nevertheless on my side to perceiving them as indistinguishable from the Republicans I had feared for the past four decades.
I now see them as purely manipulative narcissists who view people like me with disgust. I fully dislike them just as much as I have always disliked the Republican politicians I have lamented for so long. I really can't see a significant difference between them.
I always disliked Republican politicians for three basic reasons:
First, is the way they always dedicated themselves to serving the corporate elite in America, cuz they were desperately hungry for their big $$ campaign contributions. That alone was always bothered me enough to make me anti-Republican since it meant no legislation to help average folks in need.
Second, there was their penchant for promoting the military industrial complex and their advocacy of American involvement in foreign wars, using patriotism as a way to manipulate voters. It's been a disposition of Rep politicians that would frequently enrage me, for I could see the horrible cost that their patriotic appeals would impose on both American taxpayers and the overseas victims of our projections of military power around the world.
Third, there has always been their utter reliance on character assassination and misrepresentation and innuendo to win their campaigns. This was perhaps the key aspect of their political machinations that led me to perceive them as truly evil.
What Hillary Clinton and her Centrist/Corporate clique did this past election season is make her faction within the Dem Party utterly indistinguishable in my mind from the Republicans I have long feared. Half of it was her positions on the issues, but the other half was her team's execrable attacks on Bernie Sanders and his supporters.
That is why I would definitely have voted for Trump yesterday, if I could have bothered myself to make the effort to go to the polls.
Since the time this Spring when the Clinton mafia destroyed Bernie's and my hopes for the future, it has always been far more important to me to defeat the republicans ('centrists') within the Democratic Party than the Republicans who exist outside of the 'family' I have long identified with.
Yes, a Donald Trump Presidency is going to suck, I have no doubts about that. But I also know that it will suck a lot less than a Hillary Clinton Presidency would have, and the 'reform' movement within the Democratic Party that Bernie Sanders was trying to move forward will now have a chance to succeed...
Comments
I should make it clear....
...that the reason why I am not totally depressed by Trump's win is because I believe we can survive his particular kind of sociopathy. He is not going to have a Presidency that is devoid of any criticism.
The next four years will be a period of opportunity for the political Left. Every time he starts to advance some of his racist blather, the backlash from both us and the mainstream media is going to be intense.
With Bernie Sanders' reform movement now given fresh momentum by Hillary's defeat, we can begin to work for gains in the mid-term elections in 2018.
Sometimes defeat is a disguised opportunity. I think that is precisely what we are looking at this time. For me, hope has been restored...
James Kroeger
Great thing about bullshit
it makes a decent fertilizer, and Trump's brand of it may provide just what is needed to grow some great reform.
This is where I am, as well
People are talking about how surreal and horrifying this is, and I'm thinking, "But things are already surreal and horrifying."
A Hillary victory would have done nothing to change that, because the neoliberals have been greatly (but not exclusively) responsible for creating it, while pretending they're doing wonderful things for humanity.
If this Trump landslide is what it takes for people to wake up and address the reality -- the actual horror of our current circumstances -- then I see that as an enormous silver lining.
We have a big window of opportunity here. The key, I think, is going to be for the political left (the real left, not the neoliberals masquerading as liberals) to take our power, and not to ask for permission or seek understanding from the current Dem establishment and their supporters. If they "get it" about what they've done, or if they never "get it", is just not relevant anymore.
It's like leaving a toxic, abusive relationship. Disengage from them emotionally and physically, stop worrying about what they might be thinking about us, focus on what we want to create, and then move forward toward that.
"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi
"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone
Definitely...
The opportunity exists in the fight for control of the Democratic Party. The Centrist strategy has failed...spectacularly. In spite of all the advantages their candidate had, she still managed to lose to one of the most vulnerable Republicans in years.
A big part of their failure was the way they treated the economic progressives who supported Bernie Sanders, who threw all kinds of money at his candidacy. If they had played the nomination game straight, if they had stayed on the high road and had never 'gone negative' on Bernie, it might have cost her the nomination, but they would have had a united party...assuming they were willing to embrace Bernie's ambitious agenda and run with it.
They'll still try to blame it on the economic progressives, and on the Green Party in particular, but now is the time for us to raise our voices in decrying the failed 'leadership' of the Centrist Clinton political approach.
James Kroeger
The people with their hands on the levers of the D Party...
prefer to drag the party to extinction than let people like us have a say. It's a waste of time to engage with them. Look at DK this morning. They intend to double down on identity politics and further bury class concerns.
I'm not a big believer in electoral politics, but my involvement from this point on will be confined to local politics and to voting against every Democrat who runs for office at the state and federal level.
Some, perhaps...
I could definitely see some of the pure Corporate Dems who wrapped themselves around Clinton would rather see the party go completely to hell than adopt a 'People's Agenda', cuz they can just as easily become 'Liberal Republicans' in the other party.
But I am not yet convinced that they hold all the reins of power. I've got to believe, at this time, that a good many of the Dem Party leaders embraced the Centrist methodology because it seemed the 'most realistic' and because they respect raw political power, which the Clintons had in abundance the last few years.
But now they're Losers and their credibility has been shaken. The opportunity now exists, I believe, to peel some of them away from the Corporatist approach, now that Bernie's shown there is another way to raise the money they need for their campaigns.
It will take some time for many---like those at DK---to decompress, and gaze at their navels for a while. The scapegoating will take place, but it will ring hallow when/if enough of us keep throwing reality in their faces. That's how I'm seeing it.
I could be wrong, but I believe there is now at least reason for hope, which I will surely embrace.
James Kroeger