{"id":2736,"date":"2018-06-02T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2018-06-02T05:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2736"},"modified":"2021-11-18T13:56:45","modified_gmt":"2021-11-18T18:56:45","slug":"why-i-wish-hillary-had-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/?p=2736","title":{"rendered":"Why I wish Hillary had won"},"content":{"rendered":"

Distractions of anti-Trump-ism<\/h2>\n

Chris Cutrone<\/h2>\n

Presented at the Left Forum 2018 on the panel<\/a> \u201cHas \u2018the Left\u2019 Accommodated Trump (and Putin)? A Debate,\u201d with Ravi Bali, Brendan Cooney, Anne Jaclard, Daphne Lawless and Bill Weinberg, organized by the Marxist-Humanist Initiative at John Jay College in NYC on June 2, 2018. A video recording of the event is available online at: <https:\/\/youtu.be\/tUvBeXO02JY<\/a>>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

AS A MARXIST academic professional and a gay man living in a Northern city, married to a nonwhite Muslim immigrant, it would have been beneficial to me for Hillary Clinton to have been elected President of the U.S. That would have served my personal interests. No doubt about it. <\/p>\n

I am opposed to all of Trump\u2019s policies. <\/p>\n

I am especially opposed to Trump on his signature issue, immigration. But I was opposed to Obama on this as well, and would have been opposed to Hillary too. I am opposed to DACA and its hierarchy of supposedly \u201cdeserving\u201d recipients. \u201cFull citizenship rights for all workers!\u201d <\/p>\n

One response to Trump was a Mexican nationalist slogan, in response to Trump\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again!,\u201d \u201cMake America Mexico again!\u201d But, as a Marxist, I go one step further: I am for the union of Mexico and the U.S. under one government — the dictatorship of the proletariat. But Trump made Rudy Giuliani and Jeff Sessions wear hats saying \u201cMake Mexico Great Again Also.\u201d This was wholly sincere, at least on Trump\u2019s part but probably also for Sessions and Giuliani. Why not? If I am opposed to making America great again, then I suppose I am also opposed to making Mexico great, too. <\/p>\n

For the purposes of the struggle for socialism I seek to pursue, I wish Hillary had won the election. All the anti-Trump protest going on is a distraction from the necessary work, and, worse, Trump feeds discontent into the Democrats as the party of \u201copposition.\u201d With Hillary in office, this would have been less the case — however, we must remember that, had she won, Hillary still would have faced a Republican Congressional majority, and so we would have still heard about how important it would be to elect Democrats this year! <\/p>\n

I am opposed to Trump\u2019s law-and-order conservatism. Not that I am against law and order per se, mind you, and perhaps I am not even so opposed to the order and law of society as it is now. I play by the rules and follow the law. Why wouldn\u2019t I? — And, anyway, honestly, who here doesn\u2019t: \u201crebels,\u201d all? <\/p>\n

But I am aware that laws are selectively enforced and that the social order is run by those who don\u2019t always play by the rules — don\u2019t always play by their own rules! I am aware that the social order and the law are used as excuses for things that are not so lawful and orderly, for things that are not so social. I am aware of Trump\u2019s demagogy. <\/p>\n

But it is funny watching the established social and political order go into fits over Trump\u2019s insistence on law and order! <\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s election gave the \u201cLeft\u201d something to do — they should be grateful! They would have been bored under Hillary. Especially after 8 years of Obama. \u201cFascism\u201d is much more exciting, isn\u2019t it? <\/p>\n

I would have been grateful if Hillary had been elected instead — Saturday Night Live<\/em>\u2019s jokes about Hillary are much funnier than about Trump. <\/p>\n

My family voted for Trump — mostly. My mother and my brother and his wife voted for Trump. But my father voted for Hillary. When Hillary collapsed due to fatigue from pneumonia, my father dutifully went to get his pneumonia shot. But my mother previously had voted twice for Obama; I\u2019m not sure if my father did, too — he might have voted for McCain and Romney. <\/p>\n

In the primaries, I intended to vote for Bernie, but it turned out the Democrats sent the wrong ballots to my precinct (which was more likely to vote for Bernie than other precincts: I thus personally witnessed in action the Democrats\u2019 suppression of votes for Bernie in the primaries), so I went to the (empty) Republican line and voted for Trump. — In November, too: I knew that Hillary would win Illinois, but I wanted her to win by one vote less: no sense rewarding the Democrats for being greedy. <\/p>\n

I expected Trump to win. <\/p>\n

From the very moment that Trump descended the golden escalator and announced his candidacy, I thought he could win. As time went on, I increasingly thought that he would win. <\/p>\n

I had mixed feelings about this. <\/p>\n

On the one hand, I dreaded the shit-show that ensued in Trump\u2019s campaign and that I knew would only get worse if he was elected. <\/p>\n

But on the other hand, I felt an obligation as a teacher to prepare my students for Trump\u2019s victory. — If he had not won, nothing would have been lost: my students didn\u2019t require any special preparation for a Clinton Presidency. But if Trump won, I knew that there would be a great deal of confusion — and scare-mongering by the Democrats. I couldn\u2019t stand by and watch my students be lied to. <\/p>\n

I had lived through the Reagan Revolution and watched The Day After<\/em> on television along with everyone else. I heard Reagan denounced as a \u201cfascist\u201d by the \u201cLeft\u201d and experienced the multiple anti-climaxes of Mondale and Dukakis. The world hadn\u2019t ended. As an adult, I lived through the George W. Bush Presidency, 9\/11 and the War on Terror, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the financial crash, and the \u201cchange we can believe in,\u201d the election of the First Black President. In all that time, not much changed. At least not much attributable to the Presidency. <\/p>\n

So I didn\u2019t expect much to change with Trump either. <\/p>\n

But I did expect a lot of hysterics in response. I knew that my students would be scared. I wanted to protect them from that. <\/p>\n

So I sought to get out ahead of it. <\/p>\n

My students asked me to write a statement on the election in the beginning of the new academic year before the election, something short that could be handed out as a flyer. <\/p>\n

So I wrote, \u201cWhy not Trump?\u201d<\/a> — which is why I was invited here to speak to you now: to answer for my alleged crime. It was not an endorsement, nor an equivocation, but an honest question: Why not Trump? Perhaps it was too philosophical. <\/p>\n

As I wrote in that article, I thought that the mendacity of the status quo defending itself against Trump was a greater threat than Trump himself. I was prompted to re-read Hannah Arendt\u2019s article on the Pentagon Papers, \u201cLying in Politics:\u201d she said that the ability to lie was inextricably connected to the ability to create new things and change the world. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

I did find however a difference in quality and character between Trump\u2019s lies and the Democrats\u2019. <\/p>\n

The only argument I found for Hillary was that we lived in the \u201cbest of all possible worlds\u201d — as Voltaire\u2019s Professor Pangloss described it in Candide<\/em>. I didn\u2019t want to be Professor Pangloss. I wanted to spare my students that. <\/p>\n

But perhaps we did live in the best of all possible worlds under Obama, and would have continued to do so under Hillary. Perhaps Trump really has ruined everything for everyone. Perhaps the world has come to an end. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

I wish Hillary had won — so I could have found out. | P<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Distractions of anti-Trump-ism Chris Cutrone Presented at the Left Forum 2018 on the panel \u201cHas \u2018the Left\u2019 Accommodated Trump (and Putin)? A Debate,\u201d with Ravi Bali, Brendan Cooney, Anne Jaclard, Daphne Lawless and Bill Weinberg, organized by the Marxist-Humanist Initiative at John Jay College in NYC on June 2, 2018. A video recording of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[42,4,22,23,15,43],"class_list":["post-2736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-42","tag-left-forum","tag-neoconservatism","tag-neoliberalism","tag-obama-era","tag-trump-era"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2736"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3138,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2736\/revisions\/3138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscutrone.platypus1917.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}