a long time ago. If you want to hide out and watch the coming shitstorm from the comfort of your living room, go for it. There will be plenty of those good Germans who'll be doing the same thing, but if the last six decades or so have taught me anything (and I, too, was around for the shitstorms of the 60s), it's that it's never over. It's never fixed so that we can just progress to our eventual happy utopia, singing Kumbaya all the way. It's never been like that. You have to keep fighting the shit, over and over and over because the shit never ends. I prefer not to bend over and take it this time, either, old as I am.
One specific thing that is becoming clear as gin is the fact that the Democratic Party fucked up, bigly. Hillary should have won that election in a walk. Why didn't she? There are many reasons that congealed into a perfect storm, and all of them have to be looked at with a cold, objective eye, even if some possibilities might offend some people. What were the problems? The candidate; the candidate's baggage, whether real or contrived by the right wing; sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia - all these prejudices bubbling closer to the surface since the election of the first black president; the lazy, clueless, corrupt media; voter suppression in some states; Comey; the Russian hacks; the failure of the campaign to recognize a whole lot of things that Trump was able to capitalize on; the failure to read the mood of the electorate in some areas; the failure to go into some states that could have been won? Why was the campaign caught flat-footed? Why does the DNC keep losing when it should be winning? All of these are fair questions. Is anybody going to ask them, and is anybody going to come up with honest answers?
Which takes me back to my original point: People are trying to organize, not to splinter the party but to clean it up, get rid of the overpaid consultants who clearly have no idea what they're doing, and figure out how to communicate with the voters, not just the big-money donors. Some will demonstrate. I'm not a big fan of demonstrations unless they are focused and so large that the media can't ignore them, but I participated in a few back then, and I know they can easily go out of control. During the '60s and '70s, there was often a certain amount of violence at some demonstrations - Chicago, '68 comes to mind - and this will certainly happen again. It could get bad, as during the civil rights movement, and later, Kent State. People got killed, and I expect that will happen again. Our government, such as it will be, is likely to try to suppress expressions of dissent, but we know what happens when governments step on the necks of the people for too long, too hard. I don't advocate violence at all, but it will happen, just as it did in the past.
But we can't give up. Those good Germans, not wanting to make trouble, gave up, and their country was nearly destroyed. At the risk of violating Godwin's law, I am going to mention the name of Hitler. Trump is not Hitler. But it should be borne in mind that Hitler wasn't Hitler either, until he was. Hitler had help, too; and some of that help came from people who didn't try hard enough to stop him. We have to stop Trump.
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