Who Are We Americans Now?

[babylonsister]

http://prospect.org/article/who-are-we-americans-now

Who Are We Americans Now?

And who will we become under Trump?
Paul Starr
December 19, 2016


“That’s not who we are,” Barack Obama often says when appealing to Americans to oppose illiberal policies such as torturing prisoners, barring immigrants on the basis of their religion, and denying entry to refugees. But now that Americans have elected a president who has called for precisely those policies, Obama’s confidence about who we are may seem misplaced. Questions about the defining values of our common nationality have haunted us before at critical moments in American history, and now they do again: In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, what does it mean to be an American? Will Trump and Republican rule change not just how the world sees us but our self-understanding?

snip//

It would be easier to make sense of Trump’s victory if Obama had become unpopular and the voters were repudiating his administration. As of November, however, Obama enjoyed a healthy approval rating. Nonetheless, Americans elected the very man who spread the birther lie about Obama and came to epitomize the hard-right view that his presidency was illegitimate.

Perhaps Trump’s election shouldn’t have been a surprise. The antecedents can be found in the radicalization of the Republican Party in recent years, and the parallels can be found in the resurgent combinations of populism, xenophobia, and oligarchy in other countries. But Trump’s triumph was shocking because he acted so often in ways that would have sunk any other candidate. He didn’t just disregard the norms of civility, for example, by bragging about the size of his penis and insulting leaders of his own party. He openly appealed to prejudice when he denounced the Indiana-born judge in the Trump University case as a “Mexican” and called for a ban on Muslim immigrants. As he had with the birther lie, he resorted to obvious and outrageous falsehoods such as the claim that Ted Cruz’s father had been involved in John F. Kennedy’s assassination (or the more recent lie that millions voted illegally for Hillary Clinton). He violated the norms of democracy by encouraging violence against protesters at his rallies and refusing to say before the election that he would accept the results.

Trump’s brazenness didn’t just reveal who he is and how he might govern. Of course, we shouldn’t project all Trump’s views onto all those who voted for him. But when Trump’s statements and actions didn’t prove disqualifying, they revealed something first about the Republican Party and then about the voters in November who chose him as president. This was the real shock: Trump’s ability to get away with violating norms against incivility, violence, prejudice, and lying told us something that we didn’t know, or may not have wanted to believe, about America itself.

snip//

The outcome of the 2016 presidential election wasn’t predetermined by demography, economic conditions, or other circumstances. Clinton might well have won the few additional votes she needed if not for intervention in the election by Russia and FBI Director James Comey. But Democrats still would not have won control of Congress or many of the states, and they will not be able to reverse the regime Trump and the Republicans put in place unless they can win that kind of widely distributed majority. Democrats can hone a much stronger economic message, and they should. They can hope that Republicans fall out and fight among themselves, which they may. But if we are to recover from the damage and national dishonor of Trump’s presidency, Democrats need to appeal to all Americans as Americans and help all of us remember how we can be genuinely proud of our country again.

[bdamomma]

1. Putins pawns

I feel like doing this

god this is horrible. We will never be like we were before. Our country was hijacked by Putin and the extreme right I bet they are laughing their asses off.

[Buckeye_Democrat]

2. Back to the days of the uneducated Archie Bunker, apparently.

Equal pay for women?

Gun control?

Immigration?

I won't even post the stuff about race.