Will the beautiful rage help re-elect Trump?
Is all the protest handing votes to Trump? CNN’s Fareed Zakaria put that scary thought to African-American reporter for the New York Times, Nikole Hannah-Jones. As he did, you sensed anxious liberals up and down the U.S. coasts urging him on. HannahJones said Blacks were out of patience. Nothing they’ve done has changed things basically, so why not let it all rip?
Zakaria pushed the point. HannahJones said she wasn’t going to deal with it. She’s a reporter, not a strategist. But somebody has to. If you care about a situation, you need to act so that, whatever you choose to do, it doesn’t make things worse, as Donald Trump’s reelection as U.S. president surely would.
The clincher to their argument is that this is how Richard Nixon won in 1968. It was a fear-fuelled reaction to urban riots. Nixon capitalized and the U.S. right hasn’t looked back — even with “new” Democrats like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama in office.
But there’s an answer to this timid recoil from righteous action: you pull together enough people to defeat Trump without rejecting the beautiful rage in the streets. How? By expanding the appeal to include even more whites. Many are on board already. But there’s a pivotal group who gave Trump his 2016 victory: abandoned Midwest industrial workers. (Remember: Trump didn’t win the vote in 2016; he won the electoral college.) What would bring them in?
Address their desperation: health care first — in a pandemic’s midst. Raise the minimum wage and ratchet back the trade deals, as Trump claims — but only claims — to have done. It’s all there — in Bernie Sanders’ platform.
Nothing is stopping Biden from embracing this agenda; he’s spent a lifetime training as a pliable mediocrity. Aside, that is, from corporate funding he’s addicted to; abandoning it would take guts. But there’s a prize to be had.
I also don’t believe “riots” gave Nixon his victory. I speak as someone who spent the 1960s in the U.S. Nixon loved playing the card, but it only worked for those already with him. He was a multiple political loser with a repulsive personality who no one actually liked.
Nixon didn’t win the election; the Democrats lost it. By 1968, the country had turned (to the extent a country can do that) against the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Johnson didn’t believe in it but wouldn’t end it for fear of looking unmanly. He quit instead. Had the party nominated a war opponent (Bobby Kennedy before he died, Eugene McCarthy) they’d probably have won. Instead they selected Johnson’s poodle and veep, Hubert Humphrey.
The gestapoesque suppression of opposition at their Chicago convention was disgusting — and Nixonian! The party’s popular base turned sullen or hostile, as many did with Hillary Clinton in 2016 and could do with Biden; 20 per cent of Sanders supporters say they won’t back him. He can turn that around, but we shall see.
This feels like an epochal U.S. moment: as when Johnson realized the U.S. had turned against his war. Trump wants “domination” of the streets. I don’t hear that as a call to militarize; to me it rhymes more with “supremacy,” as in white.
Against it is the primal image of that knee on George Floyd’s neck. It’s like the original criminal act, the first murder ever committed — like Cain killing Abel, though worse since Cain just “struck” Abel, he didn’t bear down interminably.
None of this could’ve happened without the power to last, from slavery till now, on the part of people like the Floyds, who know and follow their history: even his 6-year-old daughter, who said her daddy changed the world. It’s a mighty force: knowing your capacity to endure won’t change your own life but may change the lives of others down the line, because you didn’t let the chain of dignity and resistance be broken, which would the only irreparable defeat.
Canadian poet Milton Acorn wrote, for the funeral of union leader Kent Rowley — the justice warrior I’ve been personally closest to: “Aren’t we/ who must move for him from now on … Or not/ In which case something isn’t done/ Burning a hole in time for all times/ Also history?/ It takes a long time/ Without a moment not needing effort.” Somebody say amen.
If you care about a situation, you need to act so that, whatever you choose to do, it doesn’t make things worse, as Trump’s re-election surely would