Saturday Mirror www.nationalmirroronline.net
NOVEMBER 12, 2016
POLITICS
PAGE
12
Revenge of the ‘Deplorables’ By Robert Scheer EDITOR-IN-CHIEF TRUTHDIG.COM
T
he people Hillary Clinton derided as a “basket of deplorables” have spoken. They have voted out of the pain of their economic misfortune, which Clinton’s branch of the Democratic Party helped engender. What you have is a defeat of elitism. Clinton’s arrogance was on full display with the revelation of her speeches cozying up to Goldman Sachs—the bank that caused this misery more than any other—and the irony of this is not lost on the people who are hurting and can’t pay their bills. This is a victory for a neofascist populism—scapegoating immigrants and Muslims—and if Bernie Sanders had been the Democrats’ candidate, I feel confident he would have won. We were denied the opportunity of a confrontation between a progressive populist, represented by Sanders, and a neofascist populist. It’s a repudiation of the arrogant elitism of the Democratic Party machine as represented by the Clintons, whose radical deregulation of Wall Street created this mess. And instead of recognizing the error of their ways and standing up to the banks, Clinton’s campaign cozied up to them, and that did not give people who are hurting confidence that she would re-
spond to their needs or that she gave a damn about their suffering. She’s terminally tone-deaf. So too were the mainstream media, which treated the wreckage of the Great Recession as a minor inconvenience, ignoring the deep suffering of the many millions who lost their homes, savings and jobs. The candidate of Goldman Sachs was defeated, unfortunately by a billionaire exemplar of everything that’s evil in late-stage capitalism, who will now worsen instead of fix the system. Thanks to the arrogance of the Democratic Party leadership that stifled the Sanders revolution, we are entering a very dangerous period with a Trump presidency, and this will be a time to see whether our system of checks and balances functions as our Founding Fathers intended. Make no mistake about it: This is a crisis of confidence for America’s ruling elite that far surpasses Nixon’s Watergate scandal. They were the enablers of radical deregulation that betrayed Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s contract with the American people in the wake of the Great Depression. The people are hurting, and regrettably, Trump was the only vehicle presented to them by either major party in the general election to register their deepest discontent. The Trump voters are the messenger; don’t demonize them in an effort to salvage the
The Trump voters are the messenger; don’t demonize them in an effort to salvage the prestige of the superrich elite that has temporarily lost its grip on the main levers of power in this nation. Thankfully, the Clinton era is over prestige of the superrich elite that has temporarily lost its grip on the main levers of power in this nation. Thankfully, the Clinton era is over, and the sick notion that the Democratic Party of FDR needed to find a new home in the temples of Wall Street greed has been rudely shattered by the deep anger of the very
folks that the Democrats had presumed to represent. That includes working-class women, who failed to respond to the siren song of Clinton, whom the democratic hacks offered instead of a true progressive like Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. Yes, we need a female president, but not in the mold of Margaret Thatcher.
‘Not my president, No Trump, No fascist USA’ CONTINUED FROM PAGE flag. In Washington DC, Protesters gathered for a second night outside the White House before marching to picket the new Trump International Hotel in Washington DC - but their initially peaceful protest also ended with arrests. Disappointed voters of all ages lit candles before moving on to Trump’s new hotel. There, people’s chants of ‘say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here’ were met with cheers. Others chanted: ‘They go low, we go high’. As the night wore on, however, things became less placid; a flag was burned in the street, and later a man was handcuffed and bundled into a van by Secret Service. Other cities affected by protests included San Diego, California; Dallas, Texas; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Las Vegas,
Nevada. They followed election-night protests that took place on university campuses in Democrat states, after alcohol-fueled parties descended into wakes as swathes of Republican red spread across the map. On the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, a group of around thirty Trump supporters tried to shout down demonstrators. In Pennsylvania, hundreds of University of Pittsburgh students marched through the streets, with some in the crowd calling for unity, while others organised an event entitled: ‘Emergency Meeting: Let’s Unite to Stop President Trump.’ Students chanted: ‘No Trump, no KKK, no fascist USA’. Students at several colleges started petitions urging professors to cancel classes due to their ‘emotional distress’ after election result On Wednesday, a Yale economics professor announced he was making an exam
‘optional’ after receiving ‘heartfelt notes’ from multiple students who were in shock over the result. Other teachers cancelled classes and one professor from Cleveland State University told her students to come dressed in ‘warm clothes’ as they were going on strike. Schools in Boston offered counselling so that students could face the ‘challenging weeks’ ahead - while other educators opted to bring in their pets as ‘therapy’. The University of Maryland was one of a number of schools across the country that decided to postpone exams, with Professor Alan Peel labelling Trump a ‘hazard’. “The nation in which you currently reside decided last night to elect a president whose own words have painted him a moral and possibly physical hazard to
many of us,” he wrote in an email to students. “I am convinced it is necessary to postpone any assessments whose scores might very well reflect circumstances far beyond the mastery of the current material.” The University of Vermont’s president Tom Sullivan offered time for tea and meditations. “This is a challenging time for many of our colleagues and students, who may be feeling isolated and concerned for personal welfare,” he wrote. Furious students started protesting across the country, with more than 1,500 angry California high school students walking out of classes in Berkeley. Some students held anti-Trump signs that read ‘Nasty Women Unite,’ ‘F*** Donald Trump’ and ‘No Deportation, No Profiling, No Brutality.’ Others waved Mexican flags. (Mailonline.com)