Guest post: "We can't compete with Trump's hate - and we shouldn't"

[JosephineMumsnet]

I'm not sure how many Brexits today is supposed to be worth. I started to lose count at around 3am. Then again, the shock is not quite the same as that of the morning of 24 June. If anything, given 2016's track record, it would have felt odd for the US election to go any other way.

Perhaps I have no right to be upset. After all, I'm not even American and even if I was, every expression of dismay will be that of a member of the smug liberal elite (since that is now what anyone who is not virulently right-wing has become). Even so, the parallels between politics in the UK and US seem to be overwhelming. We are witnessing a thuggish take-over by far-right bullies who pose as anti-establishment heroes, men who pretend to smash up the system while their own dominance remains untouched.

Donald Trump – just like the UK's Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage – is someone whose privilege has exempted him from having to follow the same rules as everyone else. He has been able to pose as a rule-breaker even though the normal rules of engagement never applied to him in the first place. Being a woman meant that Hillary Clinton could never have behaved as Trump did and got away with it. Yet precisely because of this she was dismissed as a member of the elite propping up the establishment. But Donald Trump is the establishment and it is rotten to the core.

George W Bush's victory in 2000 might have been bitterly disappointing – not to mention mired in controversy – but this is a disaster of a different order. Bush may have been racist, misogynist, classist, a warmonger, but he was within the bounds of what one might call a small-d democrat. Trump is not.

The dark turn taken by 2016 politics in both the UK and US has involved a shift to mob rule via the threat of violence. Mainstream UK newspapers call judges enemies of the state; Farage calls for Leave voters to take to the streets to 'get even' with politicians intent on 'watering down' the results of a vague, advisory referendum; a female politician is murdered in broad daylight by a far-right activist; and the man who hinted at the assassination of his female opponent is voted into the White House.

A contract has been broken. The likes of Trump and Farage would suggest that it is a contract that has enabled the elite to exploit the people. They would suggest that doing away with the superficial niceties of political discourse rightfully undermines those who use connections and educational advantage to manipulate others. But dispensing with the niceties means nothing if you replace them with threats and even more lies. It simply leaves us with nowhere to go.

I worry about how the left will respond to this disaster. Following Brexit many of us looked to ourselves, seeking refuge in self-blame. After all, if there's something you could have done, then perhaps you could do it now? But I do not want to see conversations about how Democrats should have listened more to 'the people’s' concerns about immigration and racial diversity. Plenty of those who voted for Trump were not the dispossessed; they were white college-educated men, drunk on years of being told that their dominance was under threat. There is no point in the left attempting to appease people who think this way. You just become a fellow hater, albeit someone whose mediocre, half-hearted hate can never compete with the full-blooded, unbridled hatred of men like Trump.

We need something more solid than that. This morning JK Rowling – whom I'd love as our PM – tweeted this: "We stand together. We stick up for the vulnerable. We challenge bigots. We don't let hate speech become normalised. We hold the line." That is what we must do. That is all that we can do. We know who is put most at risk by Trump's victory. The worst thing we could do is to sell them out on the basis that a politics that represents everyone is just too much to ask.

Rich white men are a minority. They do not have the right to intimidate everyone else into submission. This particular battle may be lost but people with compassion, love and the will to do right are not going anywhere.

[GinAndTunic]

Hillary Clinton - as much as I loathe her - is not a monster. She is a politician. Now, I grant you, there's not much to distinguish one from the other, but calling her a monster stoops to the level of this editorial, which is pretty low indeed. Don't go down that route.

[GinAndTunic]

"We can't compete with Trump's hate - and we shouldn't"

Oh, I don't know. This editorial gave Trump a pretty good run in terms of hate speech. Be the change you want to see.

[derxa]

Trump got the same numbers of votes as Romney but fewer people turned out to vote for Clinton than Obama. Therefore the Democrat voters stayed at home.

[LookMoreCloselier]

Famename, haha yes I am stamping my feet!

[Kaija]

Where is the "hate speech" in the op?

[prh47bridge]

The majority of whites voted for Trump and it was not only white working class men

No it was not only white working class men. If it had been he would not have become president. But they were the primary demographic behind Trump's rise.

The data that is emerging suggests that the CNN exit poll mentioned by the Guardian is wrong and that Trump did not win a majority of white women. However, this is not final so it may change.

It should be noted that it looks like Hillary got more votes than Trump (although it will be a while before we know for sure) but lost because she didn't win in the states that mattered. It should also be noted that it looks like Trump has polled around 1.25M fewer votes than Mitt Romney four years ago. That suggests this is an election the Democrats should have won. The mistake they made was selecting Hillary as their candidate. She did not enthuse people and as a result got roughly 6M fewer votes than Obama.

[claig]

'The data that is emerging suggests that the CNN exit poll mentioned by the Guardian is wrong;

That wouldn't be surprising as most of the CNN polls throughout were wrong, the percenateg of white women voting for Trump may have been higher. There were other polls before the election that had Trump leading among white women and that is without the Shy Trumpers who would have boosted Trump's numbers on the day.

The majority of high earners also voted for Trump which shows that it was not just a working class phenomenon.

[QuintessentialShadow]

Oh yes, Cumberbatch's Sherlock Holmes would make a great PM....

There is actually only one thing I am confident that I believe wholeheartedly: Clinton should not be elected because she is a woman. Nobody should be president just to get a first female president in the US.

But it says something, that even TRUMP got more votes than she did.

I dont understand how they could end up putting forward thouse candidates. How I would have loved to see Bernie Sanders in the running to th eend.

[prh47bridge]

the percenateg of white women voting for Trump may have been higher

It may be but the data suggests CNN were wrong in the opposite direction. The overall split of women between the parties looks like it was pretty much the same as in 2012 with a small swing towards Clinton. There was, however, a big swing against Trump amongst married women and a move towards Trump amongst unmarried women. Overall women voted against Trump.

The majority of high earners also voted for Trump which shows that it was not just a working class phenomenon

Trump achieved a much smaller majority of high earners than Mitt Romney. So the swing in that demographic was against Trump, just not big enough to destroy the Republican majority amongst high earners completely.

It was not just white working class men that voted for Trump. But they made the difference. Other groups largely broke much as they did in 2012. But white working class men swung strongly towards Trump and many more of them voted than was the case in 2012.

[claig]

'Overall women voted against Trump.'

Yes, but not among white women.

Trump got 60% of white womens' votes in non-CNN polls, which is not too surprising because CNN was described as the Clinton News Network, and the polls about Trump were wrong consistently among many pollsters., which is probably not surprising as the entire media and cognoscenti were all against Trump.

"The white vote — women especially — propelled Trump to victory over the first woman running for president
...
But ultimately, Donald Trump’s election victory was owed in large part to marshalling a share of the white vote not seen in a generation.

Trump computed 63 per cent among white men, according to CNN, with some of the best showings for men without a college education. He attracted a larger share of the white evangelical voters than an actual born-again Christian. According to Washington Post exit polls, 81 per cent of evangelicals sided with Trump — more than the 79 per cent they gave in 2004 to George W. Bush, himself an evangelical Christian.

And, perhaps most surprising, Trump claimed a majority of white women voters. According to CNN’s exit polls, roughly 53 per cent of white women voters went with Trump, while other polls had the ratio as high as 60 per cent

news.nationalpost.com/news/world/the-white-vote-women-especially-propel-trump-to-victory-over-the-first-woman-running-for-president

[claig]

Just as our condescending political elite pretend that Brexit was only due to the working class vote (or even more insultingly as the Guardian condescending cognoscenti say "a whitelash") so too do the same condescending elites pretend that Trump's victory was also due to a working class whitelash or "hate" and all the rest of the insults they give to the voting public.

They refuse to admit what the real reasons were because that would force them to change their policies and they can't do that because their only control mechanism is to bully, hector and lecture the public about what they are allowed to think and how they are allowed to vote.

[Tropezienne]

Good post 0phelia. I'm a little dumbfounded by Being a woman meant that Hillary Clinton could never have behaved as Trump did and got away with it.

As appalling and clueless as Trump undoubtedly is , at the VERY least he hasn't created millions of corpses and refugees around the planet, not yet anyway.

It seems to me that being a white, mega-rich, American belonging to great political dynasty DID allowed Hillary to get away with unleashing bloodbaths in Libya, Honduras Syria didn't it? It also helped her to urge her husband to bomb Serbia in 1999. etc etc.

[LookMoreCloselier]

Claig, I know it wasn't just down to the working class, it was also the middle class who has swallowed the bile about immigration being such a problem. What do you perceive the reasons to be?

[GinAndTunic]

Clinton should not be elected because she is a woman. Nobody should be president just to get a first female president in the US.

But it says something, that even TRUMP got more votes than she did.

Excellent point. And one I wholeheartedly agree with. I do hope that the next time one of the two main parties fields a presidential candidate, they pick someone who is not so awful. Really, I'm glad she wasn't elected as it would have given ammunition to those who believe that a woman shouldn't be president because they would be dire.

As appalling and clueless as Trump undoubtedly is , at the VERY least he hasn't created millions of corpses and refugees around the planet, not yet anyway.

Hooray! And, yes. And responsible for the death of a US ambassador. And that's without being elected.

[claig]

'What do you perceive the reasons to be?'

The gulf between the elites, who are beholden to Wall Street and the hedge funds and are forced to go along with the philosophy of globalisation which is detroying teh middle class and the prospects for teh working class while enriching only the on epercent, which is why Bernie Saners posed such a threat to the Wall Street candidate, hillary Clinton.

Plus, one other factor, the hectoring and bullying of thought by the elite as evidenced in this Guest Post and in articles in the Guardian or on BBC reports that accuse anyone of opposing globalisation or the rest of the stupidities that the elite promote of being politically incorrect.

Here is an excellent explanation of the globalisation aspect that Naomi Wolf gave on this morning's BBC Radio 4 Today programme where she said

"it is about globalisation and the elites against everybody else"

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04fv1yx

[BaconAndAvocado]

Oh dear....

To lighten the mood somewhat, I've just seen an anti-Trump placard n the bbc website: "Without Immigrants Trump would have had no Wives. "

[claig]

Trump called the politicians "puppets", he said they are controlled by the lobbyists, the corporations and Wall Street. Bernie Sanders said a similar thing about Hillary, and that is why Hillary lost because the majority of the public think the same and are sick of the spin and the political correctness that the puppets use to try and conceal that truth from the public.

The puppets can't change because they are controlled by Wall Street. You can't run for President unless you get billions of dollars for your campaign.

So, as all the newspapers, the Guardian and the BBC are now reporting "this is a revolution", a Trump revolution and in order to hide the real reason that it happened, they all continue to try and fool the public by calling it "hate" or as the Oxbridge graduates on the Guardian say, "a whitelash".

[Tropezienne]

Excellent post yourself. I think B Sanders would have beaten Trump actually. But Wall St trusted Hillary to do their bidding far more effectively and feared an attack from the left more than from the Trump right. Didn't predict that did they?

In October 2011, after it emerged that Gaddafi had been beaten, sodomised with a knife and murdered. Moments after receiving the news, Clinton laughed, commenting: 'We came, we saw, he died.' It's funny isn't it? We all heard Trump's boorish and vile remarks about women and we can all quote him verbatim on Mexican's, yet Hillary's perverse remark here is much less well known?

As a woman I would love to see the Free World headed by another Women. But not this woman thank you! I don't think that Hillary's gender transcends the carnage she's responsible for. Or her horrid, greedy and bloodthirsty nature.

[claig]

'But Wall St trusted Hillary to do their bidding far more effectively and feared an attack from the left more than from the Trump right. Didn't predict that did they?'

Yes and they underestimated Trump, they thought he was a clown and that Hillary, the experienced politician, would easily beat him. But people knew that she was doing the bidding of Wall Street and this was all about jobs and standard of living because the average American hasn't seen a real terms pay increase for 18 years and many people are having to work two jobs to survive.

Everyone knows that the elites don't care about them and it was the same in Brexit.

[PausingFlatly]

Sorry, claig, did you just describe Glosswitch as "the elite"?

And you always claim Trump isn't "the elite"?

I'm not sure what you're using that word to mean.

The usual meaning would be, the very small percentage of people who have the most wealth and power and opportunity, greatly above the majority of other people. Who even when they fight among themselves, remain wealthy and powerful and elite.

Trump fits that definition. Him chucking rocks at another member of the elite, doesn't make him any less elite.

I don't know Glosswitch, but she seems rather less likely to be.

[thedogatemyzebra]

Trump pretends to believe that global warming doesn't exist - was made up by the Chinese - and has basically vowed to do all he can to increase carbon emissions.
That is far worse than anything else, imo.

[claig]

'Sorry, claig, did you just describe Glosswitch as "the elite"?'

No, I think Glosswitch is sincere but I think she is saying the type of things I have just been reading on the Guardian, people can't help but be affected by the BBC and Guardian.

In fact, the more I think about this, the worse it gets. Listen to the excellent explanation given by Naomi Wolf about globalisation.

The "whitelash" thing was used in the US and has now spread to the Guardian and get ready for it on Channel 4 and the BBC, soon, probably.
It is a false analysis of what has happened and it seems like a way to divide and rule and conceal that this was really about economics and globalisation as Naomi Wolf rightly says.

All of the newspapers, the Guardian etc, are saying "this is nothing less than a revolution", but they don't like it because it is in opposition to the economic orthodoxy of globalisation, so my guess is they will try to pretend it is about race and "hate" and a "whitelash" in order to try and stop the revolution because Trump has threatened the economic status quo and the one percent by saying he will scrap TPP and NAFTA and the free trade deals.

[PausingFlatly]

But my question is, what do you mean by the word elite?

Trump is part of the one per cent. He is the elite.

He isn't planning to threaten the economic status quo of himself being rich and having power however he rearranges the deckchairs.

[claig]

This is Polly Toynbee in the Guardian and this is the headline

"Brexit and Trump mark a whitelash. Politicians must not pander to it"

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/brexit-trump-whitelash-politicians-must-not-pander

Apart from being totally wrong, which makes me think she may be Oxbridge, it is also creating a division between white people and others, and the phrase "politicians must not pander to it" means what exactly when Brexit was a referendum of the people and Trump was elected Prresident of the United States?

[claig]

'what do you mean by the word elite?'

I mean the people who determine policy, so Farage is not elite because no one listens to him.