She would be black or Hispanic or mixed race. She could be of any or no religion. Her personality would contain ingredients of Michele Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Odetta, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, Naomi Klein, Vivienne Westwood, Michael Moore, Angela Merkel, Bernie Sanders and a few others, but she would be uniquely herself.
She would be friends with people of every race, class, nationality, religion and sexual orientation. She would be well and accurately informed about social, cultural, economic, environmental and political problems at home and in the rest of the world. She would be able to identify every country on a map and probably speak one or more languages other than English. She would be unafraid, bold, outspoken, able to dish out as well as take criticism, but also kind, attentive, perceptive and observant. She would have a sense of humour. She would be able to sing and dance and write her own speeches.
She would transform politics by removing spin, soundbites, sanctimoniousness, snobbery, sneering, suspicion, sneakiness, slander, subservience and scoundrelism. She would speak her own mind, in her own words, with intelligence, insight, inspiration and factual information. Some day she'll come along.
10 comments:
Hope you're right, Natalie. I'm very disheartened.
Leslee, disheartened is exactly what innumerable people are feeling right now, around the world. 4 years is a long time...let's hope something good will emerge.
I am on the roller coaster, but believe me there are millions of Americans who are not going to roll over for this guy! We have brains and resources, and we understand our responsibility.
Hattie, yes, and this sums it up:
http://occupydemocrats.com/2016/11/16/trump-fans-attacked-columnist-hoping-trump-fails-response-perfect/
Whereas it'll probably be someone like Trump, but worse. The dogs of war in human discourse have been unleashed and they'll be hard to round up. Trump's campaign broke every rule of politics, showed there were no bounds to what may be said, and he won. What's the logical conclusion? Do what the enemy did but more so.
Remember the first two years of Tony Blair's government: as a campaign promise he maintained all the previous dodgy legislation and tax levels of the preceding Tory government. Politicians are copy-cats.
Hoping Trump fails is very short-term. Trump won't pay, the poor will pay as they always do. And there could be more of them.
Four years is indeed a long time. Chances are the USA will change. There are potential Trump voters who couldn't be bothered to vote this time and regret they didn't. Trump will lie about beneficial developments round the corner (The resurrection of the US coal industry, for goodness sake! Did you see John Kerry's despairing face as he pleaded for clean air?) . Next time it'll be a landslide for Trump V.2.
Your montage reminds me of the fag-end of the Truman administration when things had become very corrupt. One commentator said, "America voted for a saviour on a white horse to clean things up. Eisenhower entered the White House and the electorate discovered all they'd got was the white horse."
Everyone (ie, the Democrats) believes Trump is a temporary aberration. But the Rust Belt will not disappear in four years. Trump gave not-very-smart people hope; hope tends to be what you cling to right up to the end. However unlikely.
MikeM made the most cogent observation. Trump is old, to which let me add a line from Henry IV part 2: "the king has over-consumed his royal person". Let's hope Trump is successful, goes on over-consuming his royal person, gets into a poker game, bets the plot on three aces, is beaten by a royal flush and - in signing over the deeds of Trump Tower - asks in piteous voice "Why me?", and is felled by by a massive heart attack. (Literary note: such heart attacks are always "massive"). Vice-president Pence turns out to be Bernie Sanders in a different suit and The Sound Of Music is played simultaneously on all major TV channels.
Well why not?
I can open heart to trump, but I could never follow him, as he isn't who I'd want to be when I grow up.
Leah, you have a super-kind heart and I applaud it. But my cynical side says: guard it carefully from the harm that Trump and his kind can inflict on it. All the best to you, always.
Roderick, any predictions about what 4 years of Trump will be like or who will succeed him are bound to be as inaccurate as all the polls were. Even so, I don't believe he'll be re-elected because by that time his snake-oil salesman promises and boasts will have been exposed for the hot (and dangerous) air that they are.
The flaw in that supposition is that snake-oil salesmen continued to sell snake-oil.
Lots of predictions but they will keep. I had hoped you'd respond to my Eisenhower anecdote which I thought was funny. Perhaps you are too young to appreciate its gravamen.
Trump has already changed and in a big way. Yesterday he paid out $25m in compensation for a class-action about the uselessness of his dreadful Trump University. Cheap at the price but Old Trump would never have done that. He would have engaged the litigants in endless legal argy-bargy hoping they would grow tired and/or die. But even he recognises that it would not be seemly to break off from the inauguration solemnities in order to appear in court and defend an indefensible charge of misselling.
One prediction as a crust to you. At least one thing will happen within the next six months that no one - not even the savviest political commentator in the whole of the US - could have foreseen. I am starting the clock now.
It's more like the electric cowboy with a burr under his saddle and spurs, kicking the mare as he trolleys up and down the streets wearing a Navajo blanket on his way to the light house. Oops, white house. From Hollywood rode at Christmas time.
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