Georgia On My Mind

Please don’t stone me, but maybe we should be thanking The Don for becoming president? Call me delusional but hear me out.

If Hillary had won we would be hearing what I have called “The Von Trump Chorus” chanting their theme song, “Lock Her Up”, with such frequency that you would think the juke -box had developed Tourette’s syndrome. Do you think for a moment that The Don, whose motto is to win at any cost, would have walked away from a loss without trying to derail the democratic process, undermine Hillary’s victory by decrying “it was rigged, it was rigged?” Do you think the suddenly muffled pit bull Jason Chavetz who heads the ethics committee would not see Hillary as a juicy piece of red meat to be devoured? America would be waking up each morning to the unreality show called“30,000 Emails”!

Hillary’s presidency would have been bogged down in such controversy, her agenda relegated to the bottom of a sinkhole. If it is possible, the “evil” woman would have been more scorned then the “black man” who the Republicans are desperately trying to erase like some stain on the West Wing carpet.

If someone like Mike Pence were president, the Republicans would be doing the same evil stuff: deregulating banks, rolling back environmental protections, giving tax breaks to the rich, attempting to repeal and replace Obamacare, defund Planned Parenthood-you get the idea.

Yes, there may have been resistance and protest but I wonder (and doubt) whether the people of this country would have had the “Women’s March”, and the kind of grass roots activism we are seeing.

The Republicans have been practicing their pernicious brand of politics for years before The Don came along: fighting against LGBT rights, voting against the Violence Against Women Act, creating barriers to blacks voting, denying climate change, but it has taken The Don’s larger than life, evil cartoonish presence to mobilize the resistance. His overt misogyny, racism, brash grandiosity and belief that he is untouchable and above the law is the perfect elixir and lightning bolt we needed to wake us from our national sleepwalking.

After all the hand wringing and post election analysis about Wiki Leaks, James Comey and Russia’s influence on the election, the reason the election was even close, and that Hillary lost was simple: only 53% of the American people voted! People have become disgusted and disengaged by politics in this country; if there had been larger voter turnout The Don never would have won.

The Republicans are unabashed in their pronouncements that suppressing voter turnout is the ticket to their success. Despite its absurd insistence that it is a “big tent” party, it has locked itself in to a deep white freeze that Trump capitalized on. It allowed him to indoctrinate his “uneducated acolytes” in a delusional love fest where fear and false promises were standard fare and drinking the Kool Aide became akin to a baptism.

The beauty of Trump is that he can’t get his foot out of his mouth. His antics-whether it be his infantile tweeting, flip flopping on so many of the things he campaigned on, his refusal to release his taxes or he and his administrations involvement with Russia, serve up a daily inspiration of resistance; his Ban on Muslims, as horrifying as it is, was not only blocked by the courts but galvanized millions of people. We can thank Steve Bannon* for that, as it was a master- stroke of miscalculation right out of the gate driven by Bannon and The Don’s grandiose sense of power and belief they could bully their way to oppression.

As loathsome as his policies are, The Don (please don’t stone me!) is the gift that keeps giving.

And that brings me to Georgia where John Ossoff, a 30 year- old neophyte, won 48 % of the vote in a Georgia congressional district where a democrat hasn’t been elected in 37 years. This is where Tom “Mr. Price is Right,” won by 20 points just 6 months ago before he was tapped to lead the failed assault on Obamacare; this was the “Eye of Newt” Gingrinch’s laboratory for practicing the dark arts, a man so self –righteous that he left his wife for another woman while she was struggling with cancer.

Mr. Ossoff’s ascendency is a harbinger of what is to come as more and more people across America who voted for Trump begin to take off the blinders, are disappointed by his false promises (think healthcare, bringing jobs back to the coal industry), his unadulterated disregard for human rights and his unabashed attempt to turn the White House in to a profit center for his family and cronies. It is also a reflection of a resistance among democrats and some of those 47% that opted out of the election that is not going away: it has found its mojo and The Don, the would be king, by simply being The Don, will keep the flame going and the greed, offense to decency, incoherence and incompetence that define his presidency will bring him and his spineless Republican conspirators down. This can happen if we show our outrage and fight for our values and importantly, shed the complacency, stay involved and vote!