Dear friends,
I was hoping that if I waited to write until after the election it would be easier to think of what we must do. But….
Maybe it isn’t so different? Clinton would have needed mobilized nudges on a lot of fronts and maybe especially on education. But I am kidding myself if I pretend it is not going to be a lot rougher. What our new president wants is unknowable but given his alliances here’s a guess: a push for privatization in every sphere: health, social security, prisons and schools. An end to abortion rights. A takeover of the courts. Not to mention what cruelty he will inflict on the undocumented, those hoping to escape horrendous circumstances (that we are largely responsible for) and citizens who don’t fit the picture of the “model” “normal” American: White Christians.
Probably.
Of course, egotistically I think this is all my fault because for health reasons I have done so damn little this year on the campaign trail!! I didn’t do much for Bernie or Hillary. Maybe with only one working eye I will be able to focus on the hopeful half. And soon enough my nonworking left eye will almost look like the working right one. The “hopeful” side is the possibility that we can carry out the task we have been working for since I was a young girl. Changing the Democratic Party. My political allies in the 50s and part of the 60s were for creating a Labor Party. So I didn’t vote for any “bourgeois” party etc. until… hmmm. Not sure when I got wiser, or so I think. I voted for the Socialist Party. Maybe it is why I have a harder time than some being mad at those who voted third party last week. It useful to remember the changes we have made in our own viewpoint before counting those who disagree with us as out. And if we had made no changes, that too would be suspicious.
Filed under: 2016 |
Deborah Meier on Education 
We lucked out. A Clinton win would have solidified the stranglehold of neoliberal New Dems for decades. A Trump win is a double bonus: progressive take-over of the Democratic Party + purging the pseudocrats out of the DNC at every level. And an alleged bigot, sexist, etc., for the left to organize around (even if I’m not yet convinced that he will be as bad as POTUS as people fear or as Clinton would have been in a more insidious, hard for progressives to get traction against, way.
As usual, you see more with one eye than most of us with two. (Strange, that was also true of a terrific psychotherapist I knew a long time ago!) And I’m sure you know that as we get older it becomes easier to be miserable/guilty about our physical limitations. after the election I posted Auden’s famous “all I have is a voice to undo the folded lie” poem (something like that, written on the eve of WWII), and at the same time felt like I should “get out there” more. I like what the Bernistas are now doing with Our Revolution, have always felt hiopeful with Bill McKibben’s dire optimism and humility (If you were some kinda Old or New Leftist you know what is lack thereof….). No I don’t think we “lucked out” with the Wild Donald. : Animo, entonces, hermana distante……
I’ve been cautious and wary about Trump’s election. Would feel the same had Hillary won. But today’s nomination of Betsy DeVos ends the honeymoon for me. She is likely going to be worse than Rhee and Moskowitz combined. A religious nut who wants to put Jesus “back” into all K-12 schools. Forget the separation clause. A disaster of the worst sort of democracy and education.