Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Quote of the Day

The Feminist Wire's Statement on the Election is worth reading in its entirety. A snippet:
"The 2016 presidential election has deepened and revealed immense fissures in our social fabric along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, citizenship status, and ability. Though the people voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton by a wide margin, the slave-state holdover Electoral College is poised to elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States. Trump is an avowed and unapologetic racist, xenophobe, misogynist, and sexual predator whose campaign drew heavily upon vocal support from white nationalists while the Republican Party stood idly by. Indeed, their actions of recent years paved the way for a Trump presidency.

We recognize that our democracy has long been compromised by capitalism, neoliberalism, militarization, and special interests, and has been, since the founding of our nation, interwoven with white supremacy and imperialism. The U.S. is a nation of brutal-made-to-be-normalized violence. On this front, Trump’s election is nothing new. Nor are the fissures revealed by the election. What is new is Trump’s blatant disregard for democratic process, his unabashed white supremacy, his vocal misogyny, and his contempt for any semblance of human rights and social justice. He thus provides unrestrained authority and resources to violence of white supremacy and genocide."
This point is so important, I think: the election has deepened and revealed fissures in our social fabric (on the left and the right). It has not created them.

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