The Electoral College Needs To Do Its Job By Rejecting Trump

I signed a petition asking the Electoral College to act in its constitutional role by electing the choice of the most voters, Hillary Clinton, and rejecting Donald Trump.

Here is the petition.

This was what I wrote.

…...

For the past year our most important public conversation was hijacked by a more profitable "reality show" version.

On reality shows the people choose who to expel from their society and we find the betrayals entertaining, because it's not real at all. But this is really happening. This isn’t a fake reality show. A reality show performer has channeled our uglier, hateful, selfish, irresponsible side and won the electoral college vote––while losing the popular vote.

The Electoral College was created by the Founders to prevent this sort of dangerous mob mentality. And it was mob mentality that “won” this election even though rejected by the majority of people, both those who voted and those who did not.

The public conversation, mediated by our news media (our irresponsible and profit motivated media) hid Trump's many many corruptions and failures and focused instead on a minor "scandal" about Hillary Clinton's email. This was foolish and irresponsible and very profitable. It was calculated how Trump was good for audience numbers and juiced profits. The media promoted him and gave him free air time and ignored the dangerous poison in his message and the violence expressed by his most fanatical backers.

Trump is on the verge of turning the United States into a capricious, cruel, self-dealing, destructive reality show.

If the Electors of the Electoral College do not act to prevent this happening, the Electoral College will have proven itself pointless. Our democracy is at stake here. Rejecting this minority “winner” would not be an insult to democracy. It might save it from a dangerous reckless step. We don’t know what a President Trump might and might not do. He’s promised to do great evil in defiance of our American traditions. During the campaign he said so many contradictory things. Look at the fact checking pages and see how Trump exceeded all previous candidates in his lying, lying more often than telling the truth, telling enormous lies more often than small ones. Making dangerous promises to violate our treaties and break down our institutions. He has encouraged violence against people who he dislikes, people who disagree with him or criticize him. Trump has explicitly and repeatedly promised to become a tyrant. He is a dangerous man.

We have an instrument in our Constitution to prevent Trump taking power and driving us recklessly into uncertainty and irreparable harm. If there was a time when we needed our Constitutional protections this is it. Many say the Electoral College is irrelevant. If it fails to prevent this dangerous, undemocratic and unAmerican wrong from unfolding it will prove that it is irrelevant. If it acts to prevent this wrong, it may be exercising the most useful purpose in its history. The Electoral College must not validate the election of Donald Trump when a majority of voters rejected him and instead elected Hillary Clinton.

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There are important things hanging in the balance. Paul Ryan has announced plans to privatize Medicare and other beloved institutions he hates. Via New York Magazine

Meanwhile the Klan is on the march. They love President Trump and Trump speaks to their ideas. Via the Daily Telegraph, the UK's conservative newspaper...even conservatives are appalled by what America has done.

What else can we do? EJDionne in the Washington Post

How we feel. Via the New Yorker

What we fear. The deep fears felt by our minorities reported in VOX

Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s posse, wants to bring back McCarthyism. He wants a new UnAmerican Activities Committee to begin trying opponents of their radical right wing plans. Reported by CNN

Stephen Colbert discussed something alarming on his show last night. View it at the Daily Beast. One of Trump’s surrogates expressed in very clear terms that one of Trump’s top agenda items is to make sure everyone, EVERYONE, who ever opposed or criticized him is forced to bow down to President Trump, the most powerful man in the universe. (Her words.) Are we concerned yet?

America Isn't Broke, Just the Middle Class

AMERICA ISN'T BROKE. So there's no reason to kill Social Security or Medicare.

We CAN and should repair our infrastructure. It would put people to work, which would pay for groceries and clothes and rent and mortgages and healthcare and pay taxes.

Our middle class is dying because their incomes have been starved for the past thirty years, as all the productivity and increased profitability was funneled into the pockets of the people at the top.

Whether we allow the middle class to die, and the American economy with it, depends on choices we make. It's a perverse strategy to tax the people who are out of money and leave the rich alone.

Ask Americans and you won't find many who know this. You will find millions who feel strained, insecure, frightened, pessimistic about the future, but you won't find many who know why this is or what to do about it.

It is easy to get frightened people to do as they're told. First you make people less secure, then you drop the safety net. It brings a lot of people into line very quickly. Lies are essential.

Backed up by 24 hour talking heads repeating the old joke that tax cuts and endless pay raises to rich people will feed and clothe and house the rest of us. That strategy is what got us here. Ten years of tax cuts to the rich bankrupted the country.

Some are happy with the failed GOP strategy and Republicans in the House of Representatives are comfortably in the pocket of a rich minority who pay for their seats.

People need to start shouting back. Call the radio programs that push the falsehoods. Complain to the advertisers who sponsor the lies. Applaud the media sources that tell the truth. Write your congressperson. Give the Democrats some courage. And vote the GOP out.

Be clever. Surprise people. Talk back. Like this.