Re: <nettime> What is the meaning of Trump's victory?

[John Haltiwanger <john.haltiwanger@gmail.com>]

   Hello Angela,
   "I do think that every person who voted for Trump is a
   racist, and this is because from the perspective of its effects and
   those who will suffer them, there is no difference between the person
   who embraces Trump's voluble racism and those for whom it was not a
   deal-breaker."
   How is this different than any other monolithing of a given population?
   Am I a war monger who supported the destabilization of Libya just
   because I voted for HRC?�   Am I an unapologetic money grubbing neolib because I voted for HRC?
   Furthermore, why am I not a safety net slasher who believes black men
   are super predators? I mean, I voted for HRC, and that is one of her
   historical positions which I did not personally feel she did anything
   substantial to shake off.
   Was I against gay marriage just because Obama was publicly against it
   in 2008? Or maybe I was secretly excited about a massive increase in
   the surveillance state? The writing was on the wall with Obama's vote
   for retroactive immunity for the telcoms. And I still voted for him. I
   guess I am also a spy state supporter?
   The presentation of a two party system necessarily flattens the
   individual's own motivations. And it is a seriously despicable (and
   exploitable) aspect of leftist arguments that only the other side can
   be called out for monolithing. If the left cannot learn to self-reflect
   and acknowledge its own totalitarian impulses, our rhetoric will remain
   empty and obviously flawed.
   Is everyone who voted for Trump a racist? Racism is so endemic in US
   culture that this statement is both true and inadequate. Whether or not
   racism is possible without systems to enforce it, there is no small
   amount of bigotry in the form of�Islamophobia, xenophobia, and
   homophobia�in the ranks of Democrats. It is the fear of mutual
   destruction that keeps the voting block together and I would be a fool
   to think that the Wasserman-Schulz's of the world are unaware of this.
   HRC supporters claim that the social implications of the vote so far
   outweigh the international/economic ones as to make them irrelevant
   This claim is precisely the doublethink they need to absorb in order to
   vote for a hawkish warmonger like HRC while retaining their own
   self-righteousness. (My own entrance into the post-truth era came when
   I had to embrace HRC as the "best option", only possible by absorbing
   this doublethink myself). We can sit around and say that this was an
   election *only* about bigotry, but that does not make it so. And of
   course, Trump supporters do the same doublethink but in the opposite
   direction.
   Where do we go from here? Hopefully to a place of true plurality where
   we can acknowledge that conflicting realities and impulses can and do
   coexist beneath the surface. Hopefully to a place where we can
   acknowledge that no "thing" is only one "thing" and that
   simplifications and monolithing only serves to shut down dialog by
   ignoring the vast interconnecting relations which underpin any and
   every "thing".

   On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 10:28 AM, Angela Mitropoulos <s0metim3s@gmail.com> wrote:

     Felix,

     >And to argue that all forms of social solidarity that existed in
     >the post-war period (such as the welfare state, unions, community
     >churches and so on) where simple white solidarity seems also overly
     >broad.

     Polanyi's understanding of social solidarity stretches much, much
     further back than the mid-20th c, post-war period, all the way to
     some pre-capitalist paradise that never existed.
 <...>

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