I saw a post on Facebook the other day. It was a photograph of a woman holding a sign that read:
TO THE WORLD:
WE’RE SORRY!
MOST OF US VOTED
AGAINST THIS IDIOT
Sadly, the sign is inaccurate and naïve.
The word “most” implies a landslide. Used in reference to a divided group of things, it means almost all.
Yes, Clinton won the popular vote, but her margin of victory was less than two percent[1]. That is barely a rounding error. I’ve seen articles pointing to a lead of 2.9 million votes. Never 1.9%. In this day and age, 2.9 million is not a lot of people. That is less than the population of San Diego County[2].
Another quote that is common is “A historic number of people voted for Clinton!”, ignoring the fact that percentage-wise the lead was not sufficient for the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to choose to contest the results.
So, sadly, most Americans did not vote against Trump. Most Americans that voted did not vote Against Trump.
The scarier side of this, that we are now starting to see playing out in communities and in statehouses across the country, is that enough of our fellow Americans agreed with his ideology to make him President. For those who did not agree with him anyway but voted “against Clinton” rather than “for Trump,” the things he said and did were not deal breakers.
I do not intend to be divisive, but if we are to fix the damage that has been done, we need to have a realistic understanding of the battlefield.
Trump is President.
A majority of Americans did not vote for him, but enough did to make him president.
Enough of our fellow Americans were able to look at a man who spewed bile and hatred on the campaign trail and vote for him.
Enough of them were absolutely gleeful to hear him make campaign promises that sounded more like vile threats, which he has started to make good on.
The DNC had a strong hand in getting him elected, even if that was not their intent. Rather than working to rectify the situation, they spend a lot of time looking for people to blame. Those within the Democratic Party who are looking to fix things are arguing over whether the party needs to shift more to the left or more to the right, and whether the Millennials or Sanders supporters are more to blame for the 2016 loss. They are playing party politics when party politics is what got us here.
We need to strengthen our communities so that it doesn’t matter who is in charge.
The task at hand is going to require a diversity of tactics. What follows is a short list of things that we can do in our communities to help:
1. Campaign for decent candidates, and vote.
2. Organize and attend protests.
3. Get involved in letter writing and phone campaigns.
4. Run for office at the local level, and/or work to elect the right politicians at the local level.
5. Start gathering, organizing, and building the resources and infrastructure to fill the gaps.
6. Those who have the knowledge to carry out any of these tasks need to teach those that do not.
The government apparatus in our nation has been flawed from the start. Those flaws have reached the point of decrepitude over the last few decades. It is starting to collapse. This is why tasks 4, 5, and 6 are so vital. We need good leaders at the local level. We need to develop resources at the local level to keep people fed, housed, and medically fit. We need to do our best to fix the government so that it can do the most good, but we also need to prepare our communities to function despite the government if needed.
For those of you who are uncomfortable with the idea of collectivism without government, I encourage you to learn more about the idea. At the end of the day, our primary goal, the purpose behind the six tasks that I listed above, is to grow strong communities that can provide for their people locally and network together to provide for the common good over larger regions regardless of who is in power.
Just as importantly, we need to band together to prevent those who got Trump elected from being the driving force behind our nation.
[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hillary-clinton-popular-vote_us_58599647e4b0eb58648446c6
[2] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sandiegocountycalifornia,CA/PST045216