something I am grateful for today

[johncomic]

yesterday's protest marches and rallies -- it is gratifying to see so many people willing to act in defense of right

I wish I could feel more hope about them than I do, but I still recognize the spiritual value of not giving up, at least

Comments

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Should Kevin O'Leary succeed in becoming Canada's prime minister, I wonder how you will respond when Americans write things like this.

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

I hope that I will respond with understanding of where they are coming from?

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Why not explain, then, where you are coming from?

[johncomic.livejournal.com]

(I wasn't sure if anyone was all that interested!)

My sympathies are with the protesters -- they generally seem to be marching in support of causes I believe in. However, I don't believe that they will accomplish anything concrete, any more than the Occupy movement did [for which I had fervent hopes]. Administrations have learned that they can ignore the demands of these people and still get done what they want to do. I realize that the marchers gain the satisfaction of doing what they believe in, and I would wish that they could actually make things happen, but I am not holding my breath.

[ginsu.livejournal.com]

Well, if you mean "Trump is not going to change his mind" that's plain enough, but that's not the point.

The parallel you want is not the Occupy movement. It's the tea party movement. When Obama came to power in 2009, his party controlled the House and the Senate, where it was so powerful Republicans couldn't even filibuster. This gave Democrats a free hand with domestic policy.

The very next year, the mid-term elections, heavily influenced by the tea party, changed all that. Republicans came to power in the House. And Obama's power to drive change in domestic policy was gone, and largely remained gone. They simply shut down everything he tried to do through the end of his second term.

Marches of this type aren't about creating change this moment; what they do is solidify the will of millions of voters in America to take action in future elections, even though Democrats usually don't pay much attention to midterms. (In this case, the marches also expressed the will of the many countries all over the world where they also took place, as a statement of opposition to Trump's cultural outlook and foreign policies.)

The marches happened on such a spectacular scale as to be totally without precedent -- literally orders of magnitude bigger than either the Occupy movement or the tea party people. And never in American history has an incoming president had such a low approval rating, been called a liar by the NY Times in his first week in office, been sued for violating the Constitution, or been repeatedly defied by his own handpicked cabinet members (cf Mattis affirming our "unshakeable commitment to NATO," which flatly contradicts Trump, on his first day on the job). Things are getting darker for Trump and his agenda, not brighter.