Coping With An Unpleasant Reality

 

I’ve received from several friends and family e-mails exhorting me to sign a petition to request that the Electoral College elect Hillary Clinton as president.  I have responded so many times already that I may as well put it up as a blog post and explain why signing such a petition, while satisfying in the short term, just puts off the process of coping with a terrible outcome.

Let me be blunt.  This is not going to happen.  Period.  While there have been instances of “faithless electors” over the years, this typically happens in ones and twos – the overwhelming majority of the electors routinely vote for the candidate who the elector pledged to support.  In today’s hyperpolarized political climate I would tend to think that the chances of some mass defection among the Trump electors are very close to zero and none. 

The premise of the Electoral College is that this is a union of what were independent states.  One of the tradeoffs of the states yielding their complete sovereignty was some assurance on the part of the smaller (in population) states that they would have a weighted balance in the presidential elections to protect their interests vis-à-vis the more populous states.  You see the same in the composition of the Senate (which is carried through to the electoral college by the way the number of electoral votes per state are formulated).  You may well believe that this system is anachronistic.  It probably is.  It may be even worse than that.  But it will take a constitutional amendment to change it and that isn’t going to happen either.

So the real question, I think, is how are people who, like me, who are absolutely appalled at the outcome of this election, going to cope.  The classic stages of grief are denial (and isolation), anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.  Right now so many of us are in the beginning stages of the process.  In order to get to acceptance (yes, acceptance), I think the following points are worth your consideration unless you’ve bought your plane tickets already.

This is going to be a rough 2-4 (or, God forbid) 4-8 years.  If you are a Democrat, Liberal or Progressive, your representation in Congress has very little clout.  At best they can slow down some legislation and shine a spotlight on hypocrisy and other bad behavior.  So you do yourself no favors by reflexively clicking on Internet news every few minutes -- all that will do is to make you crazy.  The same is true if you’ve configured your smartphone to have news pushed to you – perhaps it’s time to change that.  I now have a regimen – I have cut back my accessing the Internet for news and political commentary to twice a day and on the second viewing I check the headlines and only click through if it is real news (to be explained below).  This is not the first time I have suggested to my vast community (:-)) of readers that they do this.  I suggested much the same thing years ago when I proposed that readers devote a total of 90 seconds per day to the 2012 Republican primaries (see You Will Thank Me For This Some Day – No. 1) and that they likewise exercise some restraint in the 2012 presidential contest (You Will Thank Me For This Some Day – No. 2).

One of the many weaknesses of the 24/7 Internet news cycle is that there is a huge amount of what might fairly be called “faux news” filling up space.  You really don’t benefit from knowing that Mike Pence is replacing Chris Christie as the head of the Trump transition team.  You don’t benefit from reading articles describing a parade of ideologues, lobbyists, fanatics, and opportunists who are among those being considered for Presidential appointments.  You do want to know who is actually appointed and, when required, confirmed.  You want to know what Congress does, not what it is thinking of doing (with some exceptions discussed below).  But the breathless rumor mongering and speculation are simply useless.

The same is true of the huckster who got himself elected President.  You need to know what he is actually doing, not what people say he might or might not do.  Not only is it a waste of our time to focus on every Facebook posting and Huffington Post “news” item, it hinders you from getting where your need to get, namely acceptance, and, ultimately, coping.

Instead, I suggest you focus on the following:  thank God you live in a blue state with like minded people and a political system that serves your interests.  Remember that the national government’s impact on your daily life (for most of my readers and for the most part generally) is relatively limited. 

If you have a job, and if you can afford the cost of housing and health insurance, your risks are that the damned fool will trigger a nuclear war or tank the economy.  I actually regard those risks as remote in the short to medium term.  In fact, quite perversely, the economy may well improve as he permits despoiling the environment in the interest of boosting short term productivity.  That is a hateful outcome, but, remember, you’re not in charge right now.  You just have to live through it and tend your vineyard until the next time (or times).

Trump and the Republicans now have to govern.  They have to deliver on their promises and show results.  I do not think that is going to be easy for them for a host of reasons.  But this post is long enough already.

Now what I’ve written above about hunkering down because your own life isn’t going to change all that much for the worse is self-centered.  I admit that.  Undocumented people living in the United States have every reason to be terrified.  Minorities of all types are likely going to be exposed, particularly in red states, to shameful acts of bigotry and mean spiritedness if either or both of the Trump and/or the “conservative” agenda are carried out, both at the national and the state level.  Trump’s very election seems to have triggered vile behavior in some people.  But I do wonder what is going to happen when those in government realize that the cost of expelling undocumented persons is not only inherently unsustainable but that much of our economic success is built on the backs of an underground economy.  As I said, now Trump and the Republicans actually have to figure this out.  I am not at all sure they can. 

Now if you want to do something, let me suggest that signing off on futile petitions, while satisfying, is not actually discharging your duty as a citizen.  If you really care, what you need to do, I submit, is the following:

1.  You need to help build political structures and movements that can re-forge what might be called the Obama Coalition (in my years it was the Roosevelt coalition) where the Democratic Party was identified with working class aspirations and was not bedazzled by tech and Wall Street.  Since it’s publicly accessible, I have no hesitation stating that I gave money to Bernie Sanders precisely because I thought that the direction of the Democratic Party was off course – way off course.  (It doesn’t have to be the Democratic Party but analysts are already wondering if the independents who ran for President did to the race what Ralph Nader did back in 2000.)

2.  If you actually want to do something, join organizations that make a difference and get active in them.  One is the ACLU.  There are plenty of others.  One reader of this blog forwarded a list of organizations you might consider supporting.  You will find it at this link.

3.  You might consider demonstrating and trying to raise public consciousness.  Frankly I’m not so sure that is all that effective but one of the ways of trying to cope here is actually doing something.  Perhaps that is a sufficient reason for going to the streets even if it does not particularly work for me.

4.  Next time around, open your wallets and take the time to do political work where it is needed, which is often out of state.

Now I could be wrong and Trump is the harbinger of an authoritarian state.  If he is, I tend to think in terms more of Mussolini than Hitler.  Hitler was a sick ideologue.  Mussolini, like Trump, was a rank opportunist.  I can recommend, highly, Dennis Mack Smith’s biography of Mussolini, which many consider definitive.  You can find it here on Amazon (or, of course, you can try your local bookseller).  I happen to believe that America’s political institutions are robust enough to handle even something as awful as Trump.  But, of course, I could be wrong.  But until the time I conclude otherwise, I’m not going anywhere and I have to find a way to live through this.  So do you.