My fearful and hopeless friends — what is to be done?
Do we cede pieces of ourselves and of society for the sake of political stability? Do we give into fear and ignorance, fault not one but both parties for the state of the union? Do we retreat back into our comfortable, self-fortified shells, too beaten up and broken to take a stance? Do we cushion the blow — “It’s only four years, it won’t be that bad, he’s backpedaling on gay marriage and the ACA” — hopeful that constant repetition might breed truth? What do we do?
To this, I don’t have one particular answer. There are a host of things to be done — all of which, first and foremost, start with you.
Reliance solely on public servants, no matter how vocal, devoted and pure, is a mistake. They are few and far between, and come January, they’ll be grossly outnumbered. Civil disobedience, disruption, unrest, organization; that is what moves government. Luckily for us, we have a rich tradition of doing just that. The difference, this time around, is that the leviathan, the monster, the public enemy number one, is Donald Trump.
Perhaps we will unify, then, under the umbrella of resistance. If this is the case, only an embrace of the Rust Belt working class will move us forward. This does not imply that we should actively court white nationalists, but, rather, try our very best to listen and support the very wounded, very diverse working class that stayed home on Nov. 8. Only a little more than 45 percent of the eligible American electorate voted, and less than half voted for Trump. There’s much more of us than there are of them.
In resistance, we cannot afford to abandon marginalized groups. They were not the ones that willed this. 88 percent of African-Americans and 65 percent of Latin Americans voted for Clinton, while 58 percent of white Americans voted for Trump. Given the rhetoric espoused by our president-elect and the people he’s voluntarily surrounded himself with, marginalized groups will bear the brunt of a Trump presidency. Their identities, their safety, their livelihood — all of that hangs in the balance. The country is blacker. It is browner. It is more educated and it is more innovative. Unification under a Trump presidency will fracture the multiethnic, multireligious, multigendered, multiracial coalition we need to progress as a society. The future looks like us and will subsequently be shaped by us. I refuse to cede pieces of society and of my beliefs for temporary, arbitrary stability.
Alexander Hamilton did say, in Federalist Paper 27, after all, that “I believe it may be laid down as a general rule that [the people’s] confidence in and obedience to a government will commonly be proportioned to the goodness or badness of its administration.” Given the appointment of Steve Bannon, this will be an administration very, very full of “badness.”
We, more than ever before, need devoted, independent journalists who seek not to stroke egos, but rather, to find and expose the unattractive, unadulterated truth. If you know me, you know that I support every argument I make with historical evidence. So let me bring in some 1900s progressivism. Without investigative muckraking journalists like Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens and Samuel McClure, corruption and big money in government would have taken significantly longer to expose. The press molds social consciousness whether we like it or not. News outlets have a civic duty not to persuade but to inform. They’ve failed us repeatedly in this regard.
Finally, I echo what I’m sure you’ve already heard before — young people need to get involved. Running for office is not the only way you can get involved. To vote is to be involved, to volunteer is to be involved, to speak up is to be involved. Apathy breeds corruption and incompetence. Before you know it, we will inherit the world, and all its bells and whistles, from our parents.
We don’t have to nor should we wait until then.
