Friday, March 31, 2017

Cephalopod Coffeehouse: March 2017

Welcome one and all to the Cephalopod Coffeehouse, a cozy gathering of book lovers, meeting to discuss their thoughts regarding the works they enjoyed most over the previous month.  Pull up a chair, order your cappuccino and join in the fun.  If you wish to add your own review to the conversation, please sign on to the link list at the end of my post.

Title: What We Do Now: Standing Up for Your Values in Trump's America
Editors: Dennis Johnson and Valerie Merians
via Amazon
We're living in interesting times.

My wife's most recent Family Book Swap book for me was What We Do Now, a collection of essays from a range of left-leaning leaders.  Included on the roster are current senators (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren), a former cabinet secretary (Robert B. Reich), a Nobel laureate (Paul Krugman), leaders of powerful political organizations (David Cole and Cornell William Brooks) and even novelists (Dave Eggers and George Saunders).  Okay, so "left-leaning" is an understatement.  These are the true blues.  All write in response to the current liberal panic: how do we survive a Donald Trump presidency?

As a rule, I avoid discussing politics on the blog.  Here, as in the real world, it's an easy way to lose friends.  But we're living in interesting times and it's becoming darn near impossible to avoid discussing where we suddenly find ourselves on the American cultural journey.  For those of you who visit regularly, my own positions probably aren't too difficult to suss out, though I'm sure this post will resolve any lingering confusion.

The liberal objections to the rise of Trump are both numerous and obvious.  I think it's important, though, to delineate between objections to the Orange One himself and objections to policy shifts that would have occurred with any Republican victory in November.  Narcissism, paranoia, contempt for humanity, lack of experience: that's all Trump and frankly, there are plenty on the right who find those qualities just as terrifying as I do.  (Any bets on which Republican senator will ultimately take him down?  My money's on Lindsey Graham.)  Trump certainly owns the ridiculous Muslim ban, the stupid border wall, his attacks on the press and his way too cozy relationships with white supremacists.  But overturning Obamacare, backslides on race relations, LGBTQ rights, women's rights, climate change?  Those were likely with any White House party switch.

All of the book's essays are well-written.  Unfortunately, not all of them do genuinely offer constructive solutions.  There's a lot of admiring the problems.  Too many of the writers focus too much on their own areas of interest (though to be fair, that's probably exactly what the editors requested of them).  I can't say the book actually made me feel any better, though I do feel I have a better grasp of some of the issues.

I did have one important epiphany after reading: perhaps we, as liberals, have bigger problems than losing one election.  Maybe there are good reasons why our side lost and failing to attend to those matters is why we lost.

Clinton lost the election because she lost three states: Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  The last Republican to win any of those three was George H.W. Bush in 1988.  The last to win all of them was Reagan in '84.  All three were close.  Trump won Pennsylvania by 68,236 votes, 1.2% of the votes cast.  Wisconsin: 27,257 votes, 1%.  Michigan: 13,080 votes, 0.3%.  All three states have been hit harder than most by the changes in industrial America over the past generation.  As Eggers pointed out in his piece, 110,000 voters in Michigan chose neither presidential candidate in 2016, twice as many as in 2012.  To be clear, these are not people who didn't vote at all.  These are people who dutifully filled out ballots, making their choices in statewide and local races, but left the Clinton/Johnson/Stein/Trump boxes blank.  110,000 people were so disgusted by the choices at the top of the ticket that they chose no one.  110,000 people felt that no candidate was doing anything to address their interests.  If 13,081 of them could have been convinced that Clinton was the best choice, she would have carried the state.

But it's not Clinton's fault.  It really isn't.  Yes, I know all the Bernie supporters (of which I was certainly one) say he would have won and maybe he would have but that's beside the point.  Those 110,000 people in Michigan are right to be disappointed with the Clintons and with the Democratic Party at large.  When you make free trade agreements that help the stockholders but screw the workers, you're going to pay for it at the ballot box.  Sure, the Republicans aren't really offering much help either but the Dems are supposed to be the pro-labor party.  For too many in this country, the Dems dropped the ball.  For those 110,000 people in Michigan and the thousands of others like them in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, etc., the lesser of two evils isn't good enough.  And it shouldn't be.

For me, it all boils down to this one simple truth: we, as an American society, are not good at dealing with poverty.  Americans see being poor as personal failure, not as an inescapable reality in an economy built on inequities.  We're great at scapegoating.  The inner cities would be better if there weren't so many poor people.  Let's gentrify!  Public schools can be saved by upper middle class parent involvement!  The far right blames minorities, immigrants and labor unions for the problems of the working poor.  Democrats blame Republicans, knowing full well their own campaign coffers are just as dependent on big-moneyed interests.  We on the left would rather blame Trump and what could only be his racist and misogynist supporters or question the validity of the Electoral College than own up to our shortcomings.

Meanwhile, poor people are left to wonder who the hell is actually going to help make their lives better.  No one does so they lose faith in the whole process.  Who can blame them?  Oh, that's right.  We do.  All the time.

Please join us and share your own review of your best read from the past month.  This month's link list is below.  I'll keep it open until the end of the day.  I'll post April's tomorrow.  Meetings are the last Friday of each month.  Next gathering is April 28th.


20 comments:

  1. Sounds like a good read. I might have to check this out, even though I'm planning to leave. I want to see how the world stage will play out.

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    1. Canada, too, has its political, um, quirks - Toronto especially. Sure they've got Handsome J. Handsome as prime minister but they also have memorable characters like Mayor Rob Ford.

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  2. Good points all, especially in differentiating between what the Republicans would've done anyway vs Trump's own problems. My biggest problem with him is he thinks he's smart, and I'm sorry, but he's not. Every time he opens his mouth or tweets he reveals his ignorance.

    FYI: Interesting Times book 17 in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, and the title refers to a myth that there exists a Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times".

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    1. Oh yes, I am well aware of the curse.

      I have never read Terry Pratchett. I should probably get on that.

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  3. American politics are way beyond me. The UK have a big division at the moment with BREXIT - personally I wonder how any politician, American or British can sometimes sleep at night.

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  4. The book sounds quite interesting. You think Lindsey Graham will be the one to take down Trump? That wouldn't have occurred to me, but I don't have a guess of my own. It's certainly true that we Americans don't want to do without "things." We dig ourselves deeper in debt all the time with our credit cards and charging things we could probably live without. Credit cards have helped to erode the economic power of the middle class.

    Love,
    Janie

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    1. Banks wield tremendous power over our lives. It's scary.

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  5. Border Wall not stupid for me, Trump's Border Wall is !
    I live in a Border State and City, doling out free money and services to all and especially Anchor Babies families is stupid. I mean really why would you not come over the border when free money and services are yours for only a Democrat vote.
    For me Trump is the typical builder/contractor the way he act is quite common. Arrogant.
    The lesser of two evils wasn't a choice for me. For all of us "stupid" people who live in the "flyover states" which the liberal west and east coast liberals like to call us, this was the problem. Lots of people like me said NO to both.
    No one really had a chance against Hillary and the party owed her and wanted her to run and made sure she got the nomination because they thought Bush would be running against her.
    All of what is left of the middle class like me always lose but the liberal east and west coast alway win no matter what.

    cheers, parsnip

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    1. I hope 2020 provides more appealing alternatives for all of us.

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  6. I think it's going to be McCain. Graham waffles around too much.

    The whole system needs a paradigm shift, but Trump was and is not it.

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    1. Both men clearly hate Trump. McCain has the advantage now of already announcing he won't run again. No reason to hold back on what he really thinks.

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  7. If I'm being honest, this is a book I will never read, but I'm glad you did and got something from it. I don't bother talking politics much because most people simply focus on whatever issue is most important to them personally. Very few people think about larger groups of people or a bigger picture. I think you did a fine job of focusing on the issue of poverty and poor people.

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    1. This sort of book really isn't for everyone, especially as it doesn't provide much in the way of constructive solutions. There is some bigger picture thinking but mostly its special interest-speak.

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  8. Thanks for sharing, Mr. Squid.
    I'm a staunch liberal democrat, as if no one suspected this from my blog, and I'm involved in about seven different campaigns to keep our collective rights by weekly letters and calls to my legislators. I may be a straight white suburban educated woman, but I fight for all the underdogs--and against those who want to accrue power. I'm super happy my healthcare wasn't repealed last week, and hope that legislation stays dead. I hope our people will continue to agitate and be active voters. Our local election is this coming Tuesday--and I'm eager to vote for trustees, school board members and library board members who'll keep our schools funded and our town functional. One thing I've learned in the past couple of years: change starts at home.
    Best to all,
    V of V's Reads

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    1. Huzzah, Veronica! I applaud your energetic involvement.

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  9. The thing that was most disappointing about this election and its results is that it exposed just how much we exist in echo chambers today. We listen to the logic of the people who reflect our views, and vilify the logic and the people who don't. To me it's absurd. I've been appalled at the state of intellectual discussion, or lackthereof, the utter lack of historic context, of comprehension, of the insistence on histrionics...We as a society in America deserve nonsense like this when all we care for are the surface elements and cannot adequately analyze what creates them.

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    1. It's not exactly an encouraging atmosphere, is it?

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  10. What an interesting post and book. The election has certainly put a spotlight on the divide in the country, and people do lose friends over discussions.
    I like how this book made you think about your own values and what the underlying problem is in here in America.

    Pointing out the three states the electoral college boiled down to and the history with those states was interesting. We need to do more for people in poverty. Your post has given me lots to think about this morning. :)
    ~Jess

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