Everyday Erinyes #125

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I admit that I sat on this story for a few days after running it by TC. That was because I consider it so important, that I wanted to make sure it got the maximum possible attention that I can bring to it. I don’t have a lot of power that way, but at least making it a Furies article will make it expected, and will get it some degree of email promotion. I do hope everyone who sees it will promote it too, particularly ayone who is volunteering with a campaign. The campaign you are working may already be aware, but if not, they need to be. Bring it to the campaign manager.

Robert L. Borosage is a leading progressive writer and activist. He created a range of progressive organizations including most recently the Campaign for America’s Future, ProgressiveMajority, and ProgressiveCongress.org. He guided the Institute for Policy Studies for nearly a decade. He served as issues director for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign, and consulted on many progressive campaigns, including Senator Paul Wellstone and most recently, Representative Jamie Raskin. A contributing editor of The Nation, Borosage’s articles have been published by Reuters, the Huffington Post, Progressive Breakfast, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Borosage is not just some guy who blogs, and he didn’t just fall off the turnip truck either. He has the experience and he has the credentials to know what he is talking about. And he is talking about what may well turn into one of the ugliest elections in history – and will, if Trump and Steve Bannon – currently running around Europe – have anything to say about it. He is talking about 2016 on steroids. He is talking about the Trump campaign relentlessly framing every House and Senate election as Trump versus Pelosi. Can Trump do that? Maybe. Last Tuesday’s primaries were noteworthy for the progressives who won their primaries. But they were also noteworthy, some of them, on the Republican side, with what passes for Republican moderates, including incumbents, being defeated by mouth-frothing Trump candidates.

Trump will reprise the themes of 2016: Trump against the failed political class, America First against the feckless elite globalists, and, of course, the politics of racial fear and division.

Trump will take credit for the economy, touting the benefits of his top-end tax cuts. But, Bannon warns Republicans, “ads on tax cuts alone [are] not going to resonate.”

The key is Trump’s right-wing nationalist populism. Trump will posture on trade, take on the Chinese, stand up for the American worker, and claim that companies are coming back home.

“The wall,” Bannon argued, is central to this. It is more than “totemic.” Immigration “is about not just sovereignty. It’s about jobs,” Bannon said. Trump has limited the flow of “massive illegal immigration,” Bannon claimed (incorrectly), and “that’s why we have the lowest black unemployment in history…and wages starting to rise particularly in agriculture.”

So, Bannon predicted, when the fiscal year ends in September, if the Congress doesn’t include “full funding” of the wall in the continuing resolution, Trump will shut down the government.

Borosage is leaning heavily here on an interview Fareed Zakaria did with Steve Bannon from Italy. But he also points out that Bannon’s predictions sound very much like the things that are coming out of Trump’s mouth. Of course, Trump as a right-wing populist is a yooge lie. But it is also a lie we will have to respond to. How, then, should we respond?

Well, not by praising globalism. Globalism sucks, and pretty much everyone in the bottom 90%, Republican and Democrat, can see that. And not by arguing that America IS already great, either. “Forty percent of the country can’t afford the price of basic goods, and those costs are still rising faster than wages. The soaring rate of suicides and decline in life expectancy for two years running might sober the cheerleaders a bit.”

Instead, we need to take him on directly. “Race-baiting politics can’t be ducked; they must be confronted. And Trump’s fake populism has to be exposed and contrasted with the real thing.”

The strongest response, as research by Demos has suggested, is to expose the truth. Trump and the Republican Congress are hurting most Americans with kickbacks for the rich, cuts in education, and attempts to roll back health care, Medicare, and Social Security. Then they try to put the blame on the poor, blacks, and recent immigrants, using racial appeals to divide us and distract us from the heist they are running on working people.

I’m going to go all Star Wars for a minute here – and I’m not even a real fan. But even I could get a chuckle out of the elaborate “Trumppa the Hutt” cartoon I show above. However, that was a chuckle. Trump voters have NO sense of humor. No matter how telling a cartoon or a cartoon-like image is, you might just as well show a Trump voter an egg timer. It would probably get more attention.

They are, however, susceptible to fear – that is obvious, and has been demonstrated over and over. Can we turn the fear that led them to Trump into fear of Trump? The photo of Darth Trump with the blue wash does that for me! But I am not the one who needs to be convinced. My personal opinion, as distinct from what Borosage says, is that images and words along that line may have some effect where humor will not.

A normal person would think that, with so many claiming to be Christian, they might be able to be reached through their religion. Most of us who can have tried that without much result. However, if anyone attends a church where hymns are sung (and Christ is honored), a new one has been written to call attention to the evils of our immigration policies. Its author, Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, has copyrighted it, but at the same time gives permission at the link to churches seeking to support immigrant families to use it freely. She set it to the tune of “Oh Sacred Head Now Wounded” – most people who sing hymns at all know that tune, sometimes with different words. There are a few additional details at the site, including the specific scripture it is based on. Please share it where it will do some good. Here it is:

When Jesus went to Egypt,
Safe on his mother’s arm,
His parents stayed beside him
To keep him safe from harm.
And when they crossed the border,
They were allowed to be
Together – seeking refuge –
A Holy Family.

O God, we pray for children
And families coming here
Now facing separation,
And filled with grief and fear.
For children, loved and treasured,
Are ripped from loving kin.
This deed, by any measure,
Is torture. It’s a sin!

O God, you’re like a mother
Who won’t forsake her own.
You’re like a loving father
Who welcomes his son home.
Now give us, by your Spirit,
The strength to challenge wrong,
To seek the best for children,
And keep all families strong.

Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, we will have need of your ferocity, of your – dare I say it – fury to make it through this election cycle. Please help us, and anyone standing up for truth, to be strong.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross posted to Care2 HERE.