The Inauguration vs #Womensmarch – A tale of two gatherings

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A powerful symbol of the deep resentment many feel at this maniac’s rise to power.

The extraordinary strength of women leading this political response against Trump could re-energise progressive politics globally. However this whole ‘Our march is bigger than yours’ social media narrative might make us on the progressive left feel superior to Trump, but it actually feeds the cultural resentment that elected him.

For those who voted Trump because of the economic pain failed neoliberal policies championed by the Democrats have caused, watching this level of venom at an election he won fair and square (putting aside the outrageous voter culls) only entrenches Trump supporters cultural dislocation.

 

The painful irony here is that if all the women who marched and protested this weekend had voted for Bernie Sanders instead of Hillary Clinton there would be no President Trump to protest against. Identity politics demanded women voted for women, yet the Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton was a neoliberal war hawk who was wedded to the very free market neoliberal globalisation that was destroying poor American workers.

Understanding why white working class Union men and women voted for Trump will win the 2020 election and remove this blight on global democracy, screaming racist sexists will ensure those voters go back to Trump.

The progressive movement still seems incapable of accepting they lost and without understanding why they lost they are making it far more difficult to win back the leadership.

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

 

 

 

29 COMMENTS

  1. Regarding the women’s march, and their demand for human rights.
    The joke is ‘human rights’ are a figment of our imaginations, there is no such thing as human rights. Humans have the same rights as cockroaches which in the grand scheme of things is zero.
    And with the environment fast approaching 410 ppm CO2, humans are very soon going to be extinct, humans have done in 100 years what last time took over 10,000 years – we have taken the atmosphere from about 280 ppm CO2 to 405+, last time this happened something like 96% of life went extinct, AND all the CO2 we have released via fossil fuels was happily sequestered below ground, … last time, this time round humans have filled the atmosphere with several periods worth of previous global warming gasses that had been removed from the environment, so this time around it is going to be a bloody sight worse than maybe any previous period of warming.
    And it will not matter who is running this show, quite simply there is nothing we can do to reverse what is in play, the climate is moving at its own speed, humans can’t slow it down OR speed it up, about the only thing we can do is nuke ourselves, which might be better than starving to death?
    Human rights = bullshit

    • No such thing as human rights, Robert? So you won’t mind if I kill you and put you family into slavery? And use your cat for slippers? All good eh?

      May the strongest win in your twisted Jungle World.

        • Robert’s flippancy actually has some truth, but needs clarifying. There are no human rights in the same way there is no money, no nations, gods or obligations. They are all mutually shared illusions (I think John Lennon had a song about it).

          But that’s the flipside to “post-truth”: not all fiction is bad! The aforementioned are actually pretty necessary to the modern world.

          BTW, NZ is the only (at least the first) country to legally recognise the sentience of animals and to grant ‘personhood’ status to envorinmental entities. That’s gotta be good, whether it’s true or not, right Robert?

      • The Roman empire operated in the basis of slavery. About 10 slaves per citizen.

        The British Empire was founded on slavery and genocide.

        The American Empire was founded on slavery and genocide.

        And now the globalized consumer society is maintained on the basis of slavery, genocide and omnicide.

        The period 1960 to 2020 will be looked back on as a gross aberration in the grand scheme of things by those who survive the first bottleneck (collapse of the petroleum economy).

        Whether ANYONE will survive the second bottleneck (shift to a superhot Earth) is still unclear. In 2016 emeritus professor Guy McPherson declared there would be no humans left alive within 10 years. But there are reasons to believe he has somewhat overstated the crisis, and remnants of humanity may persist for several decades.

  2. There’s a type of predjudice that progressives aren’t able to acknowledge as a serious issue and it’s their dislike of uneducated white people.

    Having an “out-group” serves the purpose of defining our own in-group and giving us someone to project our issues onto. Traditionally people of other races, sexes or sexual oreintation have suffered this role but it’s a point of pride for progessives that we don’t have these particalar “isms”.

    Unfortunately we’re all still dysfunctional humans and so the out-group of choice for progressives tends to be people who still exhibit old-fashioned signs of racism, sexism, homophobia etc. In short, we use their predjudice to justify our own predjudice – solidarity be damned.

    If we are serious about growing as human beings (which is what we think we have done by not having the traditional “isms”) we all need to address our own need to have an out-group.

    It’s not just people who are strictly progressives who suffer from this by any means. Most of the managerial class prides itself on it’s liberal views – but it also prides itself on being “professional”. Being a professional means “getting the job done” while ignoring the values of the system you work for – and we all know what that system’s values are.

  3. it does seem as you say Martyn that the left cant ever accept losing the election, and seem to spend the next four years just dividing the nation as NZ has been at the hands of the NatZ.

    I would have liked to see that the left would accept Trump’s offer to work with his administration to make the world safer and it is not about to happen with thus determined politically motivated lot that are chanting women’s rights only.

    Humans are quite shallow and silly it seems, and you are right to raise our frailty.

  4. How is it that there has been no women’s marches against Islam?
    So a man saying a few derogatory comments against women is far worse than honour killings, slavery, death by stoning and cultural misogyny is it?

    • BG – so fucking organise one! What sort of lazy prick are you that you demand others to do your work for you??

      • Now, now. Steady on old chap. Nice cup of tea?

        “What sort of lazy prick are you that you demand others to do your work for you??”

        You’ve just described all bosses et al, managers and business owners.

    • So a man saying a few derogatory comments against women is far worse than…

      And there you have it folks. Sexism in other countries is “far worse” than “a man saying a few derogatory comments against women “.

      I’m guessing, ‘BG’ that you are a man, because that’s not a sentiment 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999% of women would make.

      • Obviously, Trump saying grab women by the p**** 15 years ago is FAR worse than anything dealt to women in Saudi or Iran.

        Honour killings, stonings, lashings, acid attacks, these are NOTHING compared to some western snowflakes who have been triggered by some microaggressions

  5. ‘Ex-WSJ Reporter Finds George Soros Has Ties To More Than 50 “Partners” Of The Women’s March’

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-22/ex-wsj-reporter-finds-soros-has-ties-more-50-partners-women%E2%80%99s-march-washington

    “Billionaire George Soros has ties to more than 50 ‘partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington

    In the pre-dawn darkness of today’s presidential inauguration day, I faced a choice, as a lifelong liberal feminist who voted for Donald Trump for president: lace up my pink Nike sneakers to step forward and take the DC Metro into the nation’s capital for the inauguration of America’s new president, or wait and go tomorrow to the after-party, dubbed the “Women’s March on Washington”?

    The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers. Even my local yoga studio, Beloved Yoga, is renting a bus and offering seats for $35. The march’s manifesto says magnificently, “The Rise of the Woman = The Rise of the Nation.”

    It’s an idea that I, a liberal feminist, would embrace. But I know — and most of America knows — that the organizers of the march haven’t put into their manifesto: the march really isn’t a “women’s march.” It’s a march for women who are anti-Trump. ..

    On the issues I care about as a Muslim, the “Women’s March,” unfortunately, has taken a stand on the side of partisan politics that has obfuscated the issues of Islamic extremism over the eight years of the Obama administration. “Women’s March” partners include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has not only deflected on issues of Islamic extremism post-9/11, but opposes Muslim reforms that would allow women to be prayer leaders and pray in the front of mosques, without wearing headscarves as symbols of chastity. Partners also include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which wrongly designated Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a biased report released before the election. The SPLC confirmed to me that Soros funded its “anti-Muslim extremists” report targeting Nawaz. (Ironically, CAIR also opposes abortions, but its leader still has a key speaking role.)

    Another Soros grantee and march “partner” is the Arab-American Association of New York, whose executive director, Linda Sarsour, is a march co-chair. When I co-wrote a piece, arguing that Muslim women don’t have to wear headscarves as a symbol of “modesty,” she attacked the coauthor and me as “fringe.”…

  6. “Identity politics demanded women voted for women, yet the Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton was a neoliberal war hawk who was wedded to the very free market neoliberal globalisation that was destroying poor American workers.”

    I couldn’t agree more. And you’re right about the progressive movement: it needs to understand why it lost. I do think that part of that understanding is accepting that the perspectives of Trump voters have as much legitimacy as their own. This will be a difficult thing for them to swallow, I suspect; a step too far, even.

    http://esr.ibiblio.org/?m=201612

    This is a good piece. The Dems ought to take his advice, but I suspect that they won’t.

  7. Spot on. The Democrats were too power greedy and out of touch and thought they could ram through Hillary. If they had bothered to unite Sanders with Hillary (and even the Greens) and share power and be open to Sander’s popular ideas then we would have had a different election outcome.

    Likewise Obama may have been the first black president, but his legacy on the drone bombings in particular and the tax payer bailout to finance industry with little regulation or the money being paid back in full and with interest, will be a mar on his presidency.

    I think people voted (or not voted) to break the system down to try to send the message that they were not happy with the Democrats – they helped some American’s but not everyone, and the system was feeling more corrupt. Voters should not feel they have to break the system down in a democracy!

    Voters were tired of hollow words and glamorous speeches but the system not changing and actually changing for the worst – especially TPP taking away more middle class jobs – they had seen what NAFTA did for the working class neighbourhoods and jobs.

    Free trade has become a corrupt lobby group full of bloodsucking, bureaucratic litigatious dinosaurs using these deals to maintain money and power and avoid change and accountability while reducing people’s incomes and jobs, forcing down wages to producers and actually skimming off as much as they can get away with to put into tax havens and get special deals, so they can deliver ‘more value’ to their 0.1% shareholders and drive others out of business. In short nothing to do with freer trade, the opposite more rules and more bureaucracy.

    Trump’s words resonated enough to get him through, Hillary’s lovely speeches with the same well worn phrases failed to unite people in the areas they need to win, because they were meaningless and had all been said before in previous elections and enough voters felt betrayed to try somebody new that everyone seemed to hate.

    • Half of the DC woman’s Mach organisers where male and they fucked it up by advocating things that concerns male. I heard a lot of swearing and other things but little to do with the concerns of woman

  8. What humanity needs more than anything else right now is good drugs. We’re clearly fucked anyway so why not? The moment we feel iffy and mad our Dr’s are quick to stuff us full of awful anti depressants and anti anxiety potions? How about drugs instead that just make us feel great? And feel loving toward each other? Proper E is superb stuff, so I’m told. The problem is ministerial geniuses like Dunne who say yeah-nah for the collective good ( See manic hair combing and bow tie tying. Stick to what you’re good at aye Dunne-sie. )
    Look at what one ding dong’s done to us all? We’re all marching and shouting and freaking out. We’re pale with vomit inducing anxiety for the children and we have fits about what will happen to our wealth. Jesus Christ ! Chill the fuck out, have a spliff and hug something for Gods sake.
    We’ve allowed a cadre of lunatics to brainwash us all. So what? Now we know, right? Drop an E and pop on some Miles Davis and tell your lover you love her/him/it. Trump will blanch with envy, the poor old orange bastard. See, now, there’s a man who’s proud of never having taken ‘ recreational ‘ drugs. See what that can do to you! Fuck that ! As for the dubious distinction between ‘ drugs’ like fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, sertraline, paroxetine , citalopram and escitalopram. and ‘ recreational drugs’ like E and LSD and mushrooms is that one lot are just drugs and the other lot are ‘ recreational’. What would you prefer? Pain? Or pleasure? Work? Or holiday? Love? Or loathing? Would you prefer to adore your foreign type who’s just brought their foods, music and culture to your bleak little hinterlands town? Or would it be better to get pissed and bully them?
    I think we’ve all become a bit fruity to be honest and I don’t mean in the good Gay way fruity neither. Jesus! We do need to chill right the fuck out man.
    If The Trumpenator turned up to where the big red button is and no one was sober enough to help him push it but instead just laughed hysterically at his silly hair ? What would go wrong? One word. Nothing. Nothing would go wrong.
    Lets not give shit the gravitas that shit don’t deserve.

    Now, have a toke, a cup of tea and have a packet of Ginger Nuts on standby and watch this.

    Or are you going to let your ignorance/fear get in the way of a good time because what ever you say about trump? He’s got us all jumpy.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats

  9. Firstly, good piece here Martyn, good analysis, and you are right, the lack of self reflection from the Democrats has been really quite astounding, probably unprecedented, but then what do you expect with a party that went into an election, with it’s Vice chair a person who had just been fired from CNN for giving debate questions to one of the candidates, and one of the main concerns in that election being about cronyism..just so arrogant, jaw dropping.

    My analysis…

    It is really about time people on the left really come to understand a few simple truths that have become plainly obvious over the previous 12 months, and I mean really understand these points at depth.

    1. Nearly all Liberal MSM media (The Guardian, Washington Post etc) have shown that they would rather any type of right or centre right wing governance than even show tacit support the possibility a Socialist Democratic project.
    These media organizations therefor must regarded with deep suspicion, if not outright hostility

    2. Nearly all Western Labour/Liberal/Democratic political party’s would rather any type of right or centre right wing governance than a real progressive Socialist Democratic project, even if that Socialist project grows from within it’s own structure, as we have witnessed re; Labour UK.

    3. Until the Progressive Socialist Left confront and expel/ nullify the neo Liberal free market ideologues that now steer our own political organizations, nothing of substance will change, that is a just a fact.
    Watch Labour NZ getting hammered in the polls, but remain sadly clinging to the centre..it’s pathetic.

    Turn Labour Left.

  10. My first impression of these marches taking place worldwide was the impressive numbers turning out ,then on closer inspection realised what a wasted opportunity this was not that what they were protesting was not important but the most pressing serious issue at stake for millions of people everywhere is the inequality, vicious poverty and the immense wealth that the neo lib system has encouraged for the few.

    The effects surely cant be that easy to ignore yet these same people in America have just voted for a billionaire and a executive council who have a combined wealth in the billions and they are convinced that by voting for THIS is the answer to all their problems.

    Imagine the frustration that Bernie Sanders supporters must feel watching this charade after being told to support the other Clinton horror story that in terms of advancement of the real victims here would have only entrenched the effects of a system he was railing against.

    Until all economic refugees march as one to invoke real change and take on this modern day form of slavery and have people in power brave enough to change it then these well meaning marches about civil liberties, sexual indecencies and authoritarian leaders spouting nationalist slogans wont make one bit of difference to their lives of future.

  11. Martyn;

    Before I repost my comment from yesterday(with a couple of changes) I would like to say this;

    I have had a number of major posts denied recently both to yourself and Chris Trotter.
    I ask you to look into these and do you know what may be happening?

    If readers can not genuinely make critical comment of authors when one opinions then what is
    a debate all about?

    Chris Trotters article below had a rather blunt comment from Cassie that got through.
    Is it a matter of the links provied that may contradict? In this case mine came from MSM.

    https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2017/01/23/mastering-trumpian-arithmetic-why-in-the-new-political-order-225/

    Can we not talk about ‘Shadow Gvt’? Both Chris and Glenn Greenwald of Intercept calls the
    entity Deep State (I prefer my decription.Either or),that you aknowledge also,has been
    posted here.

    My comment in support of Cleangreen’s compilation clip was deleted but look at what that
    post generated. Wild Katipo’s excellent post in particular, but it was Cemetery Jones’s
    comment that prompted me to write this, which re-inforced what I consider to be TDB’s
    main virtue/value that sets it off against the rest.

    Cemetery Jones says:
    January 24, 2017 at 4:36 pm
    “Post something this sensible over at the Standard and you’ll get beasted off the page! Really enjoying the debate at TBD so much more, the Russophobia over there and the sheer cognitive dissonance at the TPPA being defeated from the right has got them totally crazy. And its funny, because they can be so loyal to Labour,….”

    My concern is that if TDB is to censor ‘willy nilly’ or take a partisan stance then we sink to
    the level of The Standard that recent comments here has shown is appalling.

    How many more think the same?
    The free flow of ideas and information is what sets TDB apart/above the others in my opinion.

    Martyn; My post.

    You have been saying about Trump “He is a sexist, racist, crypto-fascist” and
    in general anti-Trump rhetoric over the last few days. (Not here but other)

    None of those words are true of course and by repeating them I believe is utterly
    beneath you. It becomes nauseating.

    You (others) need to read D’Esterre’s link above to get some perspective.

    The picture above is simply more Fake News. See links below.

    I fear this de-legitimization of Trump narrative by the MSM will continue but surely that does not have to happen here at TDB.

    I could understand somewhat if it was because you would not want to invite more attacks against you and this site, but it seems that it may over the top.

    From the MSM itself.
    http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/20/politics/trump-inaugural-address/index.html

    http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/01/22/judge-jeanine-pirro-donald-trump-biggest-change-agent-inauguration-maddow-crime

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/5292610745001/?#sp=show-clips

    http://www.globalresearch.ca/what-is-the-link-between-one-of-hillary-clintons-largest-donors-and-the-womens-march/5570301

    http://www.infowars.com/historic-alex-jones-responds-to-trump-inauguration-speech/

    “Donald Trump To Reveal Globalist Secrets Of Life Extension And Disease Cures”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3yFdngJC3Q

    Please take the time to view.

    Cheers.

    [Iain, for your benefit I repeat The Daily Blog’s policy regarding submitted comments for publication. We reserve the right to decline publication on the grounds of repetition, irrelevancy, obvious trolling, defamatory comments, abuse of blog-authors (or other commentors), excessive length, or if the comment simply repeats what others have said. The Daily Blog, like most fora and newspapers, does not guarantee publication of every person’s submitted comments. This is not a free-for-all, and at times we may decline publishing a comment if it does not add to the overall debater. That is our prerogative. If you disagree with this policy, you are off course at liberty to create your own Forum and continue the debate there. – ScarletMod]

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