FORGET TRUMP!

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Worry About The Compromisers

—By Frederick A. Hurst—
Yes, I voted. And I voted for Hillary Clinton although I didn’t want to vote for her. And, I didn’t particularly want her to win. It was the alternative that dragged my reluctant hand to pencil in a completed line for her on the ballot. But as I did it, I felt hollow and extremely disappointed at the probability of her victory.

I considered not voting. But that wasn’t an option my conscience could absorb. I even briefly considered a vote for Trump for the same reason that I see a singular silver lining in his election. He is going to shake up Washington one way or the other and Washington needs shaking up.

I also must admit that I liked the way Trump beat the mainstream Republicans at their own subterranean, race-baiting game that they have followed since the law and order days of Richard Nixon and certainly would have followed with any other candidate with the same cynical chance of success. Trump simply raised their race-baiting strategy to higher levels by, among other tactics, forcing it right out into the open. It gave me a feeling of comfort knowing mainstream Republicans had been caught and beaten at their own game by a huckster whose political leanings still remain unclear.

Trump may have destroyed the Republican Party as we know it today. And that won’t be so bad either. It has not only been a race-baiting party but it has systematically attacked the Black vote in ways not seen since before the passage of the Voter Rights Act of 1965 with very little opposition from Republicans who claim to want to “expand their party.” If I had to make a choice between these “lace curtain” Republicans and Trump, I think I would prefer Trump, especially if he continues to moderate his profile and behavior in a manner that suggests that much of his election sloganeering was an act, although I doubt he can go that far.

And there’s even a rational argument for choosing Trump’s new Republican Party over the Democratic Party, which, for most Black folks, has evolved over the years into the party of “I guess I’ll just stay home” or the party of “I got nowhere else to go.” Sure we were excited by Obama. But, believe it, by the time the Democratic Party picks up the pieces by appealing to Trump’s White base, Black and Brown folks will become even less relevant to it. We’ll need something new. Admittedly, the Trump Republican Party will not be it.

But Trump showed everybody! He exposed the raw truth about America, the Republican Party and the Democrats all at the same time. Something about that, though scary, is pleasant. Maybe now we can all start dealing from the top of the deck with a new set of rules that reflect a refreshing new approach that we can all live with. But even if we can’t, be sure that our body politic will never again be the same.

As for you “Baby Boomers” and “Millennials,” don’t worry. We got your self-entitled backs. We lived the past. And what we haven’t lived, many of us have studied with a determination not to allow it to be relived, which is why we aren’t overly concerned about White supremacists, the alt-right, White nationalists, ku klux klan (small “k” intended) and not even the average White working men who, throughout history, have been duped into making Black folks their scapegoats while elite White folks enjoyed outlandish privileges and, often enough, got rich.

Don’t quite yet overplay what you are seeing roll out. What you have seen so far should be the least of your worries. The “boy king” Trump, the alt-right Bannon, the racist Sessions, the delusional Giuliani, the perennially addled Gingrich, these should not be your biggest concern. Not one of them could be successful imposing the extremes of their beliefs on an American public.  If you have not already studied your history, just watch closely as it struggles to repeat itself over the next four years and you will learn that what you need to worry about most are the “compromisers,” who will bargain away your fundamental interests to promote their own. You won’t know who they are yet because you’ve had no reason to know and they haven’t yet revealed themselves. But, trust me, just watch the process unfold and you’ll spot them coming out of the woodwork.

First, you must understand that Trump cannot possibly deliver on his promises, a fact he understood even as he was making them to garner votes from disenchanted White folks whose motivations for supporting him, admittedly, vary. Some are outright racists who migrated to the Republican Party after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voter Rights Act of 1965. These are people who are part of a culture that has always existed in America and will always exist. You needn’t worry that America will ever go back to the world they want, no more than it can go back to the world those less informed, working class White male Americans yearn for. The past is past. Besides, even if it was retrievable, we Black and Brown folks will not be returning to the past. We’re too smart and tough to let that happen. We’ll fight.

Nonetheless, you need to understand that compromises are about to be made and they will be historical. And if we are not all careful, Black and Brown rights will be the prime trade-off cards as will be the privileges promised to less informed White folks who “want their country back.” Trump can’t give them their country back because it wasn’t their country in the first place. It has always been all of our country.

But, what Trump can offer them is scapegoats. When it becomes obvious that he can’t build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, rationally reverse trade policies, send 11 to 12 million Hispanics, many of whom are absolutely essential labor to America, back to Mexico, make Russia’s Putin America’s friend, jail Clinton, win the war against terrorism overnight, unilaterally end the nuclear pact with Iran, re-align the world order starting with NATO, take away medical insurance from 20 million folks who just got it, dump the Cuba rapprochement, spend huge amounts of money and cut rich folks taxes without wrecking the economy, and can’t make the country that is already the greatest country the world has ever known, “great again” in the manner his supporters are expecting, Donald Trump is going to have to figure how to appease those White folks who get mad at him. And if history is any guide, Black and Brown folks will be on his radar screen because we are red meat to much of his base.

But Trump can’t sell us out without the help of the compromisers. You need to understand that compromise is both good and bad and often both at the same time. Remember, our nation was built on compromise by some of the greatest political thinkers the world has ever known. The Constitution they produced, separating the powers of government, was ingenious and designed to guarantee government by compromise. But two key compromises written into the same Constitution were to make Black folks three-fifths of a man and to deny women the right to vote.
And many historical compromises emerged from it over time. Remember the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision and the Separate but Equal decision that abandoned our kids to segregated and unequal schools and so many, many more. I could go on and on and on with examples of compromises that were made in the interest of folks who were willing to strip minorities of their rights in order to promote their own, often selfish, interests but I’m sure you get the point.

We are certainly going to suffer some political setbacks over the next four years. But Trump shouldn’t be your biggest concern, whether he stays far out to the right or moves to the middle. You should worry more about so-called “friends,” both Republican and Democratic, independent and unaffiliated, who took noble stands against Trump but who seem to be already positioning themselves to compromise.

I don’t mind compromise. It’s the American way that Republicans shamelessly and recklessly abandoned when our first Black President, Barack Obama, was elected. It’s the substance of the coming compromises that we all need to keep a vigilant eye on.

I don’t think we are up for a repeat of some of the most egregious historical compromises or the like. No, I don’t. I think the Baby Boomers and the Millennials of all races who are inheriting this country are too smart to let that happen as are we who have been there before. But, nonetheless, we all must remain alert to what is unfolding from the 2016 elections and make certain that the compromisers don’t sell us out. ■

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