Have the Frogs..., Finally..., Hopped Out of the Pot?

Over on Facebook I commented..., on a couple of posts..., regarding the protests of the Donald's election. The posts were denegrating the protesters. My comment...,

Well..., I am glad to see people in the streets..., it might be a bit misguided in this instance..., but that's what it took to turn this country around after ten years of war in Vietnam..., hope that it doesn't take the National Guard to start killing students to put a stop to the last 15 years of war. Whatever it takes.

Yeah..., the mainstream media is trying to portray..., spin?... the protests as only being about Trumps personality shortcoming..., and many they are.  They also seem to be saying that the protesters are all Hillary supporters and are displaying a "poor loser" mentality. But the MSM has been so wrong about everything else throughout this election that I don't put much faith in their analysis of anything.

The protesters appear to me to be the frogs that have been simmering in that pot of water..., and instead of getting that gradually increasing temperature rise that a Hillary victory would have surely cooked them..., the temperature was cranked up by the Trump victory and they have hopped right out of the pot to protest.  Right on I say.  If a Trump victory is what it takes to shake people up then I will celebrate it..., though I was not a Trump or Hillary supporter..., I wrote in Bernie on my ballot.  I endorsed and gave money to Bernie early on..., when I thought that plutocrats and oligarchs of the GOP would run Jeb Bush against Hillary.  The First Time...., posted in August 2015.

Later in February of 2016..., when it became apparent that Trump had..., to my disbelief..., somehow thwarted the powers that be in the GOP and would be their nominee..., I doubled down on Bernie..., because of my fear and loathing of both Hillary and Trump.  Here is a snip of the comment I made over at The Agonist Blog some ten months ago...,

Earlier this week I floated another $100 to Bernie…, and now my emails asking for more are addressed to “Scott R.” instead of just “Scott”. Makes you think that there are real and thoughtful people running his show.

I do think though…, that a lot of Bernie supporters are really just anti-Hillaryers. If it comes down to her and Trump…, the only way she will win is if the Republicans vote for her out of spite for Trump. And a lot of Bernie supporters are likely to vote for Trump rather than Hillary. I sit on that fence myself.

So..., maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised that Trump won..., I called it back then.  But with the MSM, the military industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry, big pharma and health insurance industries..., and most of all..., Wall Street and Goldman Sachs..., not to mention all the shot callers in the GOP..., pushing and pulling for her..., and all the polls showing she would win..., I grudgingly accepted it.  I went to bed about 9:30 Tuesday night thinking that there was no way that the powers that be would let her lose..., even after Florida had been called for Trump.  After all..., the Dow futures had dropped 1000 points when it looked like a tighter race than predicated.  Wall Street had a whole lot of money invested in Hillary..., and they were showing their displeasure at the prospects of a Trump win.  But it didn't take them long to face up to reality when Trump actually won.  Yeah..., the Dow didn't just bounce back..., it hopped up to near a record high.  They really aren't that alarmed about the Trump victory..., and neither am I.

As Dave Lindorff over at CounterPunch says in The Silver Linings in Trumps Win...,

Let’s look on the bright side.

Donald J. Trump is the next president of the United States. His stunning victory over Hillary Clinton came after he had first crushed the Republican Party establishment, steamrollering all the candidates it put forward and defeating party leaders’ concerted efforts to deny him the nomination as he rolled up victory after victory in that party’s primaries.

But Trump did more than that. He also, along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, smashed the Democratic Party establishment too.

He goes on to say...,

Most importantly, it seems likely that we will no longer have to worry about the US going to war with Russia.  While Hillary Clinton, with her stated desire to establish a “no-fly zone” in Syria that even leading generals said would mean “war with Russia,” Donald Trump throughout the campaign made it clear that he did not want the US confronting Russia. He said, to the consternation of most establishment Republicans, that he thought the two countries “should be working together.”  That view, if he is serious, bodes well for Syrians, and for Ukrainians as well. Trump has also condemned NATO, which since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been converted into a military adjunct to aggressive US efforts around the globe to sow chaos, mayhem and regime change — something Trump has opposed. With luck Trump, who recognizes that Americans do not want endless war, may act to neuter NATO, hopefully by withdrawing US funding for the organization and allowing it to fade away — something that should have happened in 1990 when the Berlin Wall came down. 

 Lindorff goes on to chronicle all of Trumps shortcoming..., as I have already acknowledged..., there are many..., but says...,

On balance though, I would argue that Trump’s victory and his drubbing of a Democratic Party that has been fleeing from its New Deal and Great Society past for decades, is what is needed if we are to have any hope of restoring any kind of popular sovereignty in a US that was sleep-walking into a kind of corporatist oligarchy. Trump, along with the Sanders movement during the Democratic primaries, effectively tossed a molotov cocktail into that whole system.

 He sums up his piece this way...,

But that’s all history now. At this point, it’s on all of us on the left, and in the rest of the Democratic base — the working class, union rank-and-file, people of color, immigrants, feminists, environmental activists and peace activists —  to pick up the pieces and to build a movement of resistance and a new political party of the left to keep socialism on the political agenda in America and to fight for real progressive change and real democracy.

 Which brings us back to the current protests.  I think that the MSM is wrong about those people out in the streets.  They don't look like Hillary supporters to me..., they look more like Bernie supporters.  In rally after rally it was noted that young voters were out in force..., and I also believe that the violence is being pumped up and misapplied..., just as it was during the Trump rallies.  I believe that there has been a seething anger building in this county for quite some time now and has been ready to boil over.  The current election has demonstrated the very worst that this county has to offer. The protests may be a bit misguided at this point..., my hope is that the anger can be harnessed and applied in a positive way.  Martin Luther King preached none violent protest with eloquent words..., but it took people in the streets to accomplish what was accomplished. The Vietnam War might still be going on if it wasn't for people in the streets..., how long have we been in Afghanistan and Iraq? OccupyWall Street was a good..., but short lived start.  Standing Rock is hanging on.

Yeah..., Lindorff may say that the..., "...US has been sleepwalking into a corpratist oligarchy"..., but I say that we have been a batch of frogs slowly snoozing and simmering away in the pot.  I hope we have hopped out of that pot now.