by Evert Cilliers aka Adam Ash
In the three states that gave him his electoral college majority — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — Trump won by 100,000 votes, which are fewer than the number of voters suppressed by various Republican measures. In Wisconsin, a federal court found that 300,000 fewer voters cast ballots because of new ID restrictions; Trump won there by only 27,000 votes. Similar suppression efforts in other states also worked well.
Nationwide, Democratic voters outnumber GOP voters, yet Republicans control the House and the Senate.
So the government of America does not represent a majority of us Americans.
If this is democracy, Superman poops kryptonite.
The policy positions most favored by most Americans — get money out of politics, reverse climate change, have free tuition in community colleges, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, reverse mass incarceration, rebuild our infrastructure, get equal pay for women, take on Wall Street, protect the most vulnerable Americans, improve Obamacare (why not Medicare for all?) — were those of a candidate who was not even on the general election ballot. Bernie Sanders, known as a radical progressive, but whose positions are totally centrist, lost to the neoliberal Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
So: you call America a democracy?
No way.
Our president does not represent the majority.
The House does not represent the majority: the Republicans control it because of gerrymandering, i.e. cheating.
The Senate does not represent the majority: the Republicans control it because of gerrymandering, i.e. cheating.
The Supreme Court does not represent the majority: it would have, if the GOP had not refused to consider President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, in a radical move unprecedented in American politics. (This same do-nothing Congress, the least productive Congress in history, has obstructed everything President Obama wanted to do to provide us with more jobs, a fairer economy, and a better America.)
We have a minority-chosen President, Congress and Supreme Court.
We do not have a democracy.
What can we call this very weird and comically absurd America?
A plutocracy? An oligarchy? A kleptocracy? A kakistocracy?
Certainly not a democracy.
With Donald Trump and his cabinet so far — the richest cabinet of billionaires ever — we certainly look like a plutocracy.
And a rude question pops up like a zit on a teenager: how far are we on the way to becoming a kleptocracy?
Well, the billionaire who will be running our country … he has a business history of consistently stiffing his suppliers.
America, get ready to be stiffed on all fronts. Get ready for massive and continuous and nationwide anal rape on a daily basis.
With the ability of a GOP-dominated Congress to enact a GOP agenda without fear of a Presidential veto, get ready for 20 million Americans to lose their healthcare when Obamacare is repealed; for the richest Americans to get richer when their tax rate is cut; for middle-class and poor Americans to get poorer when their social benefits are cut; for Wall Street to fleece us even more when their regulations are cut; and so on.
Get ready for the prospect of an out-and-out kleptocracy.
The blue-collar working-class voters who think Trump will get them back their great manufacturing jobs of yesteryear are in for a rude awakening. Those jobs are never coming back, because they were lost to automation much more than off-shoring. America manufactures more than ever before, but we do it with more machines and fewer people, sometimes with one in ten fewer workers than before.
And when those workers realize they've been conned by their hero, what will happen?
The massive Women's March on Washington the day after President Trump's inauguration will be a harbinger of things to come.
We will have mass demonstrations. We will turn into a nation of protesters. There will be rage in the streets. There may even be civil unrest.
Come 2020, the election will be something to see.
My prediction: Elizabeth Warren becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, and wipes the floor with Trump. Democrats take over the Senate and very possibly the House, too.
The pendulum swings back from right to left with a reverberant clang.
And then, folks, we will actually be a democracy.
But up until that glorious moment, not.