More from the “random post-election thoughts” bin:
I don’t think I ever documented this, but Clinton won (or “is winning” I should say) Virginia 49.60 to 44.56 with 99.88% of precincts reporting. (I was going to round that but I suddenly realized I have no idea how you’re supposed to round election results. Normal rounding? Truncation? One up, one down?) It’s a bit outside the range I guessed (I guessed that if Clinton won by less than 3-4 points the election would go to Trump) but Trump still won.
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Regarding the safety pins: I never get involved in “retweet if you think X” campaigns out of general principle. I’m also generally not comfortable with “wear X if you support Y” campaigns. I could tolerate ribbons to support charities I guess, but I’m not okay with safety pins to mark friendly people.
I’ll admit that some part of it is a general fear that it might provoke a stranger to ask me, “Hey what’s that?” and thereby trap me into a conversation I don’t want.
But another part is this: I understand why it’s being done, and I sympathize, but those kind of things feel like attempts to publicly separate people into “good” groups and “bad” groups, and I can’t support that. It’s something that both sides do (flag pins, anyone?). It reinforces feelings of fear and suspicion and divisiveness, in my opinion, and I don’t want to be part of that right now.
In a way I also feel like it violates my privacy, and I’m a very private person.
Now this next part might freak people out. But every time I see one of these “wear X to denote Y” things I immediately think of images like this:
I know intellectually that the circumstances and intent are totally different here, but it doesn’t feel different to me. For every person that might recognize the symbol and think, “whew, that guy’s on our side,” there’s another person that might recognize the symbol and think, “okay, let’s keep an eye on that guy because he’s an enemy.”
In this case, quite literally a 1:1 ratio of people. It might seem perfectly safe to wear badges in California and New York where Clinton won like 90-10 or whatever, but in my neck of the woods the totals are much closer to 50-50.
And I’m not even discussing the number of trolls that are going to wear safety pins and then say, “Tee hee, I’m not safe! I’m a hungry wolf ready to eat you all up! Get them up against the wall!”
I understand I might be labeled a “bad” person for saying all of that, so I guess I’ll have to live with it. I’ve tried to explain it as best I can. If it’s any consolation I don’t wear flag pins either.
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A lot of people are saying #NotMyPresident. (I’m almost positive people said the same after Obama was elected.) Well, who *is* your president? How does your government operate? What checks and balances are in place? How is legislation crafted in your system? How does the press ensure your freedoms? Because you have no president, does that mean you have to rights? I’m being flippant of course but I’m legitimately curious if anyone has actually thought that through. (I hope not, because that would indicate an actual plot to takeover the government.)
Something else I feel like I need to say which may have been missed in my previous ramblings: Right now everything is well within acceptable parameters of normal American democracy. If I start to see signs of things going south, I’ll happily join the resistance movement. I don’t know exactly what I can *do* in the resistance movement, except write some dumb blog posts. I can run a web site at least. :)
I’ve been fascinated to hear some analysts make the case that Trump’s win is similar to Reagan’s win, in that many at the time also viewed him as an outsider who wouldn’t be able to get anything done. I was just entering middle school in 1980 so of course I have no memory of that election campaign, but it’s interesting to think about.
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I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet either: I do not believe in the axiom, “If group A supports candidate B, then candidate B endorses group A.” In other words, I don’t accept that Trump supports (insert bad thing here) because (insert bad thing here)-supporters voted for him. Racist, misogynist Nazi, KKK, whatever. I also don’t believe in the related axiom, “If candidate A fails to denounce group B, then candidate A must support group B.”
I’ve railed upon that kind of rhetoric for years. They are logical traps used to circumvent intelligent debate. They’re used to persuade distracted people, in other words. I say “distracted” instead of “ignorant” because sometimes people are too busy to deep dive into dissecting election rhetoric.
Here’s a handy trick you can use though: If you see someone say, “Group A supports candidate B, so candidate B endorses group A,” you can safely ignore everything that person says. Seek guidance elsewhere.
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Regarding those protests again, I watched the local NBC 12 live feed of the protests that went on in Richmond, Virginia on Thursday night, November 10th. The cameraman walked beside the protesters while they walked down the city streets, just kind of pointing the camera in their general direction. The mic was live so I got to hear all the chants. (The feed stopped when they reached police cars, I’m not sure what that was all about.)
I didn’t see anyone that looked more than college age. I heard a lot of cool chants against fascism and the KKK and Trump. I heard Black Lives Matter chants. I heard chants I didn’t understand.
I came away with the distinct impression that these folks would have protested even if Clinton had won. They sounded more like anarchists than disappointed Democrats. They sounded like they were having fun, quite frankly. I heard laughing, I heard woops and cheers. It looked more like a parade than a protest.
I guess we don’t quite know how to do civil unrest yet.
