No, We Do Not Deserve Trump
Yesterday I dealt with the first of the three common objections to voting for Hillary in the general despite having been firmly in favor of Bernie in the primary. To recap, I identified these as:
1. That's not how democracy works! I can vote however I want!2. We "deserve" a Republican president because we're such sheep and this is the only way to shock us back into awareness.
3. The system is broken; this is why Bernie is not winning the nomination.
Today I answer #2. Tomorrow I will make my response to #3.
First, I should point out that the people who make this argument are never the people who will suffer under Trump/Cruz. I have never heard this line of "reasoning" from any person of color. Never from anyone poor enough to worry if two minimum-wage jobs are sufficient to keep them and their kids off the streets -- or will they need three? Never from a woman who's been voting for 70+ years, but was turned away this year because she cannot find her original birth certificate. Never from someone worried about being fired for having married his husband. Or afraid of being beaten to death for using the public bathroom that corresponds to her identity.
No, this bluster only proceeds from the pie-holes of white, middle-class or above, cisgender heterosexuals. Usually males, but occasionally also from women in their thrall. People whose response to Voter ID laws is, "what's so hard about getting a driver's license?" These are the people who make the argument that "we" deserve to suffer in order to finally catalyze the change they claim to want. But by "we" they mean others, not them. These people have little or no prospect of the suffering they would happily inflict indirectly on others, just to see what happens.
Not to mention, we have tried this. We had eight years of it (thanks, Ralph!) and I don't think it moved us one iota closer to any changes we need. Rather, it gave the termites of the 0.01% and the Dominionists all kinds of cover under which to eat away further at the foundations.