Published June 15, 2016 in Tulare County's Foothills Sun-Gazette
A couple of years ago I wrote a
column called “Divided We Stand,” focused on Lindsay and the outside media’s
criticism of the city council for having differences of opinion that kept it
from “moving forward.” I argued then
that moving forward without considering, much less resolving those differences
would not be an advance in civic government, but rather yet another example of
the community’s old-time insiders overlooking and overriding the legitimate
concerns of the community’s newcomers.
I’d like to make a similar argument
now at the national level and the cry for “unity” coming from leaders of both
political parties. Astounded by the popular
support for “insurgent” candidates on each side, the standard-bearers of both
parties have called for unity at moments when it seemed they might reign in the
dissidents on the fringe and regain control.
They were wrong.
Republican voters gave their leaders
the finger and plopped Trump in their lap.
The result? Now calls for party
unity would mean abandoning hope for consistent expression of conservative
values, not to mention civil discourse.
We don’t hear those calls quite so much now as Trump’s loose cannon
approach to campaigning, with its blatant irreverence for the legitimate
concerns of every group except workingclass white males, creates canyons
between himself and Republican standards of decency.
Voters with concerns not so
different than Trump supporters’ brought Bernie Sanders neck and neck with
Hillary Clinton despite the early naysayers, who then played the unity card
once he rounded the last bend hard on her flank and made her jockeys bring out
the whip. The working people of all
ethnicities and genders found themselves held up in his campaign, their
concerns honored both in his rhetoric and his solutions. To “unify” the party before the presumptive
nominee had made commitments to those concerns would have been an act of
violence comparable to what happened in the Republican party, even though
reverse.
I was terribly impressed last week
by the 5-minute speech Bernie Sanders made in front of the White House after conferring
with President Obama. (You can watch it
on YouTube or I can send you the transcription.) Rather than concede defeat in order to
“unify” the party, Sanders said “We will continue doing everything that we can
to oppose the current drift toward an oligarchic society where a handful of
billionaires exercise enormous power over our economic, political, and media
life.” The media missed that part, by
and large, emphasizing his vow “to do everything in my power – and I will work
as hard as I can – to make sure Donald Trump does not become President of the
United States,” which is an extension of the first statement in my mind.
Sanders put his finger on the
problem of unity for the Republicans:
that it will divide them from the vast percentage of American voters and
American values. “Donald Trump would
clearly, to my mind and I think the minds of the majority of Americans, be a
disaster as President of the United States.
It is unbelievable to me, and I say this in all sincerity, that the
Republican Party would have as a candidate for President, who in the year 2016,
makes bigotry and discrimination the cornerstone of his campaign. In my view, the American people will not vote
for or tolerate a candidate who insults Mexicans and Latinos, who insults
Muslims, who insults African-Americans and women.”
I truly appreciate the way the
Democrats are handling the Sanders campaign, even if it is driven by the need
to garner the power of his supporters.
This is a perfect example of what our votes mean: they count, especially when they express a
significant proportion of the needs and concerns of people in this
country. May we stand strongly divided
until real change is conceived, lest we fall from grace under the pretense of
unity.
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Trudy
Wischemann is an agrarian activist who writes.
You can send her your campaign thoughts c/o P.O. Box 1374, Lindsay CA
93247 or leave a comment below.
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