Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair
Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was seen as the ultimate slap in the face to the leftists among my generation of baby boomers. The ultimate truth is, however, that we had had so many real and symbolic slaps in the face since the youth movement and baby boomer cohort of the Vietnam era that one big slap in the face on Tuesday, November 5, 2024 was of exponential force, but not unexpected. Many who were left standing from social movement after social movement were brought to their knees again, and at this point in a person’s lifespan there is hardly time to regain one’s footing. It’s not a cliché that a person or movement can only go to the barricades so many times, either in real time or symbolically, and continue standing. Only relatively few people have done the latter and not to discount the great movements for social change and peace that have taken place since 1975, the end of the Vietnam War.
This is not the political system from which a cohort of the fabled youth movement could have imagined. It would have been difficult to envision or accept the march of the ultra-rightists and Trump in key positions of his second term.
Most of the people I knew from the Vietnam era became assimilated careerists, if indeed they were lucky enough to find a trade or profession that allowed them a measure of material comfort. Out of a car full of friends traveling north of Ottawa to visit a family acquaintance, who had become an expatriate during that era, not one maintained any connection to 1960s radical, or even moderately liberal values, in the decades that followed. One of the group of friends contends that she thought we were on Cape Cod during that trip, a difference of about 400 miles or so, with a river nearby in Canada rather than the Atlantic Ocean.
This is Kelly Hayes in “Let’s Move Beyond Blame to Fight Each Other in the Face of Fascism” (Truthout, November 8, 2024):
“Leftists are profoundly alienated and siloed, warped by trauma and disillusionment. Some are bitterly disappointed by allies they feel have failed to adequately support Palestinian survival and liberation. Others are furious with leftists who didn’t support Harris or rally movements behind her as they did for Biden in 2020. Everyone has opinions on who failed, and how. I believe there’s plenty of blame to go around.”
While Donald Trump has threatened to penalize leftists who have criticized him, and especially those he considers leftists in the media and those who dare protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, here is an example that already has played out with the former editor of Scientific American who dared to call supporters of Trump “bigoted” and “fascists”: “The editor in chief of Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States, has resigned more than a week after she posted comments on social media that called some supporters of President-elect Donald J. Trump “bigoted” and “fascists” (“Editor Resigns After Calling Some Trump Supporters ‘Fascists,’” New York Times, November 15, 2024).
Reflecting on the Truthout article cited above, The Grayzone covers the finger pointing of Democrats who just a short time ago were on the bandwagon of the failed Harris campaign (“The meltdown begins,” The Grayzone, November 15, 2024).
A truth of the failed and tormented among the Democrats, if elections actually can change anything materially in the US against the warmongers and the military-industrial complex, is that the march of ignoring and penalizing both the working class and segments of the middle class began in the ashes of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society because of the Vietnam War. The march toward endless wars, the marginalizing of workers in a globalized economy, the destruction of the environment, among many other wrongs have gone on for a half century. That Richard Nixon, a warmonger, was the last New Deal president tells much. The Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration are initiatives of his administration and almost nothing came later from the handwringing of Democrats.
Where to go now? I don’t know because the forces of reaction are already on the ground and well ensconced and bankrolled. Look to the repression of those, especially on campuses, who stood up against the massacre of Palestinian people in Gaza for an example of what’s in store. Trump has Iran in his sights. He’s got lots of support among his nominees for his administration and lots of money to throw against Iran. Trump and his ilk of rightwing zealots will make resistance both necessary and much harder.
Biden has authorized (November 17, 2024) long-range US-supplied missiles to be used by Ukraine to strike within Russia. The players change, but the ground and air wars are the same. Biden condemned a march of about 10 people parading through Columbus, Ohio carrying Nazi flags. Biden, however, won’t condemn the Nazi symbols of the Azov Brigade who have taken part in the Ukraine war. The modern-day version of the World War II brigade are today’s “freedom fighters.” At this writing (November 19, 2024), Ukraine has fired US-supplied missiles into Russia in a war that could have ended through negotiations long ago.
American Exceptionalism is on the trash heap of history, but the zealots: political, economic, social, and religious fundamentalists, will not let us sit this one out.
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