11/9

Election Day 2016 was on November 8, but it wasn’t until the early morning of November 9 that the electoral college maps turned blood red, Hillary Clinton conceded the race, and Donald Trump, apparently with 2.8 million fewer votes than Clinton (and with a little help from Russia, the FBI, and the media), won the general election and became the President-elect of the United States.

Reaction to the upset victory was swift: in the days following the election, fueled by Trump’s campaign rhetoric and emboldened by his win, racist Trump-supporters committed no less than 867 hate incidents around the country. Neo-Nazis held a rally in a federal building in downtown Washington D.C. and celebrated the Trump victory with Nazi salutes and cries of “Heil Trump!” Trump undermined the legitimacy of the election that he had just won by tweeting unsupported claims of voter fraud, because losing the popular vote triggered his narcissistic personality disorder. Trump also broke with decades of established protocol and spoke to the President of Taiwan. Since then, China has made a formal diplomatic complaint and captured a U.S. Navy unmanned drone in the South China Sea.

Despite promises to “drain the swamp” and stick it to the elites, Trump began filling his cabinet and staff with people just like him: white men (16), billionaires (3), and naturally, men accused of domestic violence (3). Hillary Clinton was crucified for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs, but Trump tapped three Goldman Sachs executives for roles in his cabinet, including Secretary of the Treasury. And any notion that Trump would keep his populist promises were definitively put to rest when he selected the CEO of Exxon Mobil to be Secretary of State.

Dr. Ben Carson is the only African-American member of the otherwise all-white cabinet. Carson is the nominee for HUD, presumably because Trump noticed “Urban” was in the name of the department. To his credit, Carson is the most educated of the cabinet picks in an administration that suffers a massive education deficit compared with the previous administration. This is most evident with Trump’s selection of Rick Perry to head the Department of Energy. The Department of Energy is responsible for the nation’s nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, so it is appropriate that the current Secretary of Energy is a theoretical physicist. He replaced a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. In fact, 115 scientists associated with the DoE have won Nobel Prizes. Rick Perry got a D in a class called “Meats.” Even the Secretary of Education doesn’t have an advanced degree.

There is a darker side to these cabinet selections that goes beyond them just being rich and lightly educated. In many cases, the nominee for a given cabinet post has objectives or beliefs that are contrary to the department for which they have been nominated. Rick Perry wants to abolish the Department of Energy, which he will soon lead. The incoming Secretary of Education doesn’t believe in public schools. The incoming Labor Secretary is against a meaningful increase to the minimum wage and making more workers eligible for overtime pay. The incoming head of the EPA doesn’t believe in climate change and has spent much of his career suing the department he is about to lead. Trump’s pick for Attorney General, Senator Jeff Session (R-Ala.), was once denied a federal judge post because of accusations that he made racist remarks. Sessions also has a record of hostility against voting rights. How can he be expected to fairly enforce the laws of this country?

Perhaps most disgusting to me personally is that 81% of white evangelicals voted for Trump who then selected Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. Bannon is the former chairman of neo-Nazi favorite Breitbart News, holds up Satan as an admired figure and says that “darkness is good.” Trump drained the swamp and then scooped up the frog shit at the bottom and made it his cabinet.

The most shocking and important news since the election is the confirmation from the US intelligence community (especially the CIA, FBI, and Director of National Intelligence), that Russia, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, hacked US servers and engaged in cyber attacks with the objective of helping Donald Trump by politically undermining Hillary Clinton. This was a direct attack on the United States, our free democracy, and our sovereignty. Some are calling it a cyber 9/11. All 17 US intelligence agencies overwhelmingly agree that Russia was behind the hacking. Trump not only denies this, but he has gone out of his way to discredit his own intelligence community and praise Putin. Republican senators Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are leading the bipartisan call for investigations into this deeply troubling matter.

Let me be clear: our democracy is being threatened. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will divide and destabilize this country from inside and out. Kleptocracy and authoritarian rule is coming. Trump will control the media so that we can’t see what is happening. His last press conference was more than 140 days ago! Once the US has been destabilized, the world order established after World War II will start to fall apart. According to Senator McCain, “We’re starting to see the strains and the unraveling of it, and that is because of the absolute failure of American leadership.” We must have bipartisan leadership willing to make a stand for our sovereignty and democracy. It’s my belief that old party lines will cease to matter. There will only be fascists and anti-fascist resistance.

Here is my darkest fear: it’s too late. The deep divisions in this country are worse than ever. Most of the country is entrenched in their partisan silos. I see very little cooperation between political parties. There is little healthy dialog or exchange of ideas. The most substantial indicator to me that we may have already lost is the deafening, apathetic silence of the people. There are a few leaders speaking out and I know who to follow on Twitter to find appropriate levels of outrage and fear. But on the whole, I do not see the kind of response this crisis should generate. I have posted the alarming reports of Russia violating the sovereignty of our nation to my friends. I have sounded the warning! Alarm! I expect people to respond as if it were the emergency dive scene in Das Boot. Instead…I see nothing or almost nothing. Response from my peers is tepid.

On December 16, President Obama likely gave the last press conference of his term. Based on his call for an investigation into Russian hacking, the bipartisan support of investigations by senate leaders, and the latest reports that the CIA, FBI, and DNI now all agree that Putin was directly involved in the cyber warfare, I hoped that Obama, a man who can rise to being a great leader and orator, would do what Trump isn’t doing – calling for the country to come together across party lines and rally against this attack on our sovereignty. I thought we might even hear about new sanctions against Russia. Instead, Obama didn’t even mention the Russian hacking in his prepared remarks. When asked by reporters about the crisis, Obama defended himself and reported saying to Vladimir Putin, the violent former head of the KGB and current de facto dictator of Russia, “Cut it out” because “we can do stuff to you.” Not exactly make my day. Putin was equally unimpressed and continued the cyber attacks. The country needed Obama’s leadership and we didn’t get it. On the same day, the Director of National Intelligence announced that there would be no special briefing for the Electoral College explaining the extent of Russia’s influence on the election. Calls for a delay were not heeded. Today, on December 19, the Electoral College will vote and there is no reasonable hope that Donald Trump will be unpresidented. It’s clear now that nobody is coming to help us. And most people don’t care. I fear that this country will fall under authoritarian rule not with a cry, nor with a whimper, but with a meh.

I have never been an activist before. I have held very strong opinions about politics and social causes, but I have never participated in any meaningful way that furthers those causes. In the 80s, I bought the Band Aid record Do They Know It’s Christmas? for famine relief in Ethiopia and a Rock for Amnesty compilation tape knowing that some portion of the proceeds would go to Amnesty International. That’s it. That has been the extent of my activism. But these alarming circumstances that I find us living with have forced me to reexamine this approach.

There is a resistance movement and I have joined it. In the coming days and weeks, I will report from that movement and describe steps you can take to participate in the preservation of your freedoms and inalienable rights. On 11/9 it became clear that those things were under attack by enemies both foreign and domestic. Stand up. Resist. Never forget.