Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton did take a majority of the actual votes 54% -- in the wrong places, where they did her not enough good as the US is so gerrymandered and the electoral college a left-over from a racist colonialist republic. Yes the electoral college stands for the continued refusal of the US as a gov't and country really to have a one-person one vote system.
She is a good, gracious, intelligent, well-meaning, experienced statesman, and Kaine is a kind and generous spirited man. A sizable proportion of the US population accounts these qualities unimportant. If you think as I do that Bush was total disaster (it began with his war on Iraq and his putting down the percentage of taxes on the rich), you ain't seen nuthin' yet when it comes to Trump and a Republican dominated congress.
What follows is an elaboration of the above.
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From Bondarchuk's 1966 film adaptation of War and Peace: the 1812 battlefield (a still)
The polls put me in mind of an incident years ago. A black man ran for Mayor in LA (was it?). A huge majority of those polled showed he was going to win. He lost badly. Conclusion: those asked lied. Polls are like sex surveys -- where most people lie, and are presenting an image of themselves they want the pollster to take away. We might bring the two polling topics together: A man who boasts of sexual assault, who when accused of rape replies, look at her, implying no one (man) could possibly want her (sexually) has won the US election.
I thought about the Renaissance playwright Christopher Marlowe's ironic comment in his fiercely anti-semitic play on Barabas: how Barabas goes about "kicking cripples under wells" and poisoning wells." The last day of the campaign Trump had a man with cerebral palsy physically kicked out of his rally for peaceful protest with a sign. He then mocked him, and when President Obama in public respected the man's purpose and commiserated with him over his treatment, Trump mocked that. Trump says there is no such thing as global warming and I've not doubt his FBI will ruthlessly do all it can to facilitate the fossil fuel industries fracking wherever they please.
Here is the man's plan rightly described by John Nichols: a plan to inflict gradual and immediate pain and immiseration on 98% of the US population
While in Cornwall I did hear and listen to ordinary British people around me and came to the conclusion the Brexit vote was not a no to neoliberalism but the product of fear and dislike of immigrants. At least that was the way I heard it talked about: in terms of other countries stealing and undermining English jobs and industries. I heard people talk in a way that suggested they didn't identify with Scots people. I heard someone defend the attacks on Polish people the couple of days after the Brexit vote. The neoliberal policies of the EU are bad too and as in the US this is part of why a majority voted to leave Europe.
There is no excuse for this choice in the sense that the condition of the average person in the US is the result of similar choices for public officials for decades. Each time starting in the later 1940s the US population was given a choice they regularly chose people who fleeced them and enriched themselves and few groups in society, and went to war to do it, killing, maiming, destroying other people's social revolutions around the world. The average person's immiseration today comes from decades of the same kind of choice they made yesterday. From the formation of a strongly conservative set of courts, privatized prison system, loss of public lawyers and use of plea bargaining with huge sentences as the threat so the person doesn't go to court but to jail for a shorter time (not short). So now a near majority of US people chose a crook, ignorant, serial liar, rapist, racist who has promised to extend torture, willingness to use nuclear weapons, no sense of anything but narrow national interest as if all peoples are not in the world together, and a TV right-wing radio host with extreme religious views (he is for inflicting conversion therapy on GLBT people) and ceaselessly anti-labor.
It is an even worse nightmare than the elections of Nixon, Reagan, Bush senior (Reagan 2) and Bush junior. None of them openly professed to ignore law and the constitution. The last day of his campaign Trump had kicked out of a rally physically a man with cerebral palsy who was peacefully protesting with a sign. He then mocked the man. He then mocked Obama for publiclly supporting this man's right to protest the derision he aims at the disabled. The man showed real courage to go to such a rally and act on his own behalf and those of his fellow Americans.
Miss Drake
