I want to publicly commend and honor the million-plus non-white voters who voted but weren’t counted in the 2016 election.
Once again, the GOP stole the election. Once again the Democrats refused to stand up for you and themselves. The big evil corporations which control both parties favor ruthless cheating. Once again, it was up to the Dems to suck it up or lose their corporate support. Just like 2000 and 2004.
Once again, the GOP stole the election. Once again we are to be bullied into pretending the GOP didn’t steal the election. With expert bully Donald J. Crow standing over us.
Obama won twice, when they let most of your voters go through. Not in the congressional and state elections, which they bought and stole and blamed Obama for losing. And we edged closer to Republican control of everything. And suddenly, no Voting Rights Act protection.
In this election, GOP-controlled “Battleground State” officials again tossed your votes out. Journalist Greg Palast has thoroughly documented how the Trumpers organized this, and it was done.
But it’s obvious when statistics look sadistic. Do you believe 40% of Latinos voted for their tormenter? And are exit polls only wrong when they favor the Democrat?
Only as proof of fraud. Knowing those he abused and persecuted wouldn’t be counted. Delirium Tremens spent little money campaigning because he knew he was gonna steal it and get away with it!
The GOP and the Corpo Media want you to believe mobs of Trailer Trash came out in a big surge and elected the Great White Dope. They didn’t. They never vote. The might, however, have gone to the Trump rallies so they could see themselves on TV. There are not enough of them, even if they did vote.
Now the GOP cutthroats are again enjoying all the recriminations and the guilt and the what-did-we-do-wrong liberal hand-wringing among the vocal idealists as they blame and blame and blame themselves, validating the official results of this sick election.
All you did wrong was back a gutless party in a corrupt system which sold out civilization, life-or-death issues and your right to vote to white supremacy and fascist reaction — all to make Dirty Donald look like a populist.
The GOP and the Corpo Media would like to see poor white folk and poor non-white folk hate each other and blame each other. If we all ever got together without racial infighting, the 1 Percent would be finished and they know it.
So they want a race conflict, they would help disenfranchise so many to “elect” the Ku Klux Klan’s endorsed candidate.
How about this:
WE ARE THE HUMAN RACE!
W.B. St. Clair
Parkersburg, W.V.
“Reconcile,” they say. “Trump is our next president. Get with it. nnSorry. It’s not that simple for us who really love and honor our country. A Trump presidency insults every notion of American greatness.
For a year on TV, that steaming pile of turpitude showed us what he is: an amoral voluptuary, arrogant bully, business cheat, bigot and liar, a gigantic egotist who bragged that he’s so rich he can make anybody “kiss my a$$.”
He will be the face of our mighty, idealistic nation. His erect middle finger will eclipse the Washington Monument, mocking the Founding Fathers, the pioneers, the explorers, the thinkers, the immigrants, workingmen and slaves who built the country, the soldiers who (unlike him) risked their lives; and especially all those women, contractors and students he exploited in his career as a Hugh Hefner wannabe and flimflam man.
If you can reconcile having that bloated buffoon represent you to the world, what does America really mean to you?
James Alexander Thom
Bloomington, Ind.
I’d like to congratulate the Green Party, particularly those in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, for showing the courage of their convictions in making sure that Hillary Clinton, who only adopted about 90% of Bernie Sanders’ progressive positions in her campaign for president, was defeated in the end by Donald Trump, who promises to deport millions of Latino immigrants, require Muslims to register with the federal government, withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and reverse the regulations of the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies that interfere with fossil fuel production, and he’ll appoint Supreme Court justices who’ll take us back to the jurisprudence of the Gilded Age. Trump stands opposed to nearly everything the Green Party stands for, but that didn’t stop these political purists from drawing votes away from Clinton. In the end, Green standardbearer Jill Stein got 51,000 votes in Michigan, which Trump won by 10,700; Stein got 49,678 in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by 46,700; and Stein got 31,000 votes in Wisconsin, which Trump won by 22,000. Those three states provided the margin of victory for the Orange Crusher.
Mission Accomplished, Greens!
Nolan O’Brian
Dallas, Texas
As almost all progressives mourn the ascendency of president-elect Donald Trump, I take a different view of his win and Hillary’s loss. Without a doubt Bernie Sanders was the progressives’ choice, and by far the best outcome for true progressives would have been his victory in the Democratic primary, and then his winning the presidency. This was not to be since the Democratic Party elite were too tied to their corporate and big-money funders. The Democratic Party is not the party it used to be; granted there are still a few who work for the people, as was the case until Bill Clinton arrived with NAFTA and the gutting of “welfare as we know it;” but now most, like Hillary, work for their corporate handlers. Hillary won the primary; I would like to say “fair and square” but I think that was not true; she and her political machine ran roughshod over the primary election, shamelessly tilting the playing field in their favor by the actions of Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the super-delegates. She was the well-funded corporate candidate, with a very questionable history on honesty, the environment, and trade … to say nothing of her vote for the Iraq war, and her aggressive tendencies in both the Middle East and with Russia.
But nonetheless she is much preferred to Donald Trump. She is at least not a racist or bigot, and is extremely qualified to be President … unlike our friend, Donald.
But what would her election have brought us? In my opinion, it would have brought us a slow death, rather than the quick one we may get from Trump. She is a corporatist, as is Obama, and we would just be inching along, little by little, on the path toward corporate rule. The fact that she is seen as the embodiment of the status quo would ensure that there would be minimum backlash against her. But progressive values would be shunned by her and the victorious Democratic Party once she was installed as President. Now that Trump won, we have the makings for a real progressive revolution, and this I feel gives us hope for the future in basically two ways.
The Democratic Party could reinvent itself, get rid of the “corporate Democrats” and revert back to its origins as a party of the people, not as “Republican light.” Or, better yet, a third party could be created to compete with the racist, evangelistic Republicans and the corporate Democrats. These likely scenarios would never come about with a Clinton victory. The electorate would have grudging accepted her, and the bulk of us would have slowly succumbed to an agonizing corporate world.
Bob Bogner
Aspen, Colo.
Donald Trump has done us a great service. He’s finally attracted all the vermin that the Republican Party has subtly encouraged for decades from the shadows and exposed them. Now it’s time to step on them. The only caveat: I don’t believe the Democrats have the guts.
Robert McCallister
Lantana, Fla.
Fidel Castro adopted Communism in reaction to Fulgencio Batista’s cruel regime. Whereas The US eliminated Communism (or at least tried to) in Vietnam on the infamous theory of “domino effect.” No doubt Mr. Castro faced opposition — he jailed and executed those objectors. Whereas we bombed Vietnam and when it did not work we sent troops there. More than 50,000 of our soldiers died there and we have no figure of the Vietnamese who died because of our action. In Castro’s Cuba he made gains in spreading literacy and universal health-care (while we are still struggling). We have politicians and expatriates condemning President Obama for normalizing relations — it is high time we acknowledge that both were wrong.
M. Askarian.
New York, N.Y.
The 12/1/16 TPP included an article by Professor Juan Cole exposing the fraud behind Erdogan’s massive purge of security forces, media and now his political opponents in parliament.
Professor Cole points out that the coup supporters numbered a couple of hundred military officers but so far over 100,000 people have been arrested. Most of them civilian journalists and politicians.
One fact missing in the article is that the purge was planned before the coup. On July 7 the New York Times printed “Failed Turkish Coup Accelerates a Purge Years in the Making.” The article includes an interview with a Turkish official who casually mentions that the officers who planned the coup were probably aware of Erdogan’s planned coup. The implication is that the coup was a feeble act of self-defense.
The only other place I have seen this mentioned was in an article in the French paper L’Express.
I would also point out that Erdogan’s attack on the cleric Gulen is, in fact, a repudiation of the moderate, democratic Islamic movement that bought Erdogan to power. Gulen was one of his supporters and continues to support peace with the Kurds against whom Erdogan is waging war with the support of the US government.
E Haberkern
Berkeley, Calif.
I’ve been feeling truly depressed since Nov. 8. Then I read TPP — still depressed. I got to the very last page and, .lo and behold, a wonderful, truly uplifting article by my new absolute favorite, Garrison Keillor. I’m so happy you were able to add him to your staff. I look forward to his articles.
Thank you.
Rose Marie Foltz
Canton, Ohio
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2017
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