I dunno. This reminds me of what I used to hear from other white people back in the 1960s, "You can't legislate love." True, but no one is or was trying to do that.
It should be possible to legislate justice. The sad thing is that it's coming undone. Voting rights are weakened, the counter-revolution is working. Another way to look at it is that the revolution is here. It just isn't what anyone on the left expected.* But here it is, the brutal fact of it.
Donald Trump increased is margins with every demographic group in America except - wait for it - white people. White people still supported him overwhelmingly but not AS overwhelmingly.
I want to be proven wrong. I want it to turn out that, somehow, the second Trump administration results in a rising tide that lifts all boats.
Then I will have been on the wrong side of history. Well, who cares. I'm 74. My exit time is nigh.
*I just reminded myself of this from Krista Tippet's podcast https://onbeing.org/programs/marie-howe-the-power-of-words-to-save-us-may2017/#transcript
Ms. Howe:
... I love Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, and all of those old-school science fiction writers. And remember all those books we read — maybe you read when you were a kid too?
Ms. Tippett:
I did too. I loved all that stuff.
Ms. Howe:
I adored it. And about the robots were going to take over and the machines were going to take over. And just last week it occurred to me, “Well, they have. It’s just different from what we expected.” Joseph Brodsky…
Ms. Tippett:
[laughs] That’s right.
Ms. Howe.
It’s just different. And one of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky, who’s a Russian poet, wonderful, amazing poet, who was exiled from the Soviet Union for being a poet.** And he said look, he said, “You Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.” And I was thinking the machines — what face do you look into more than any other face in your life? The face of my iPhone.
Ms. Tippett:
Your screen. Yeah.
Ms. Howe:
My screen. I gaze into that face. I do what it tells me to do. If aliens came down and saw us all walking around, what would we do? All of us are walking around…
Ms. Tippett:
[laughs] Who do they obey?
Ms. Howe:
…looking into the — “Oh, they serve these machines.” I mean, the machines rule us. I have no will when it comes to my machines, to the computer, hours doing emails. I never applied for that job. What happened? It happened in 10 years, 15 years. They rule. It’s different from what we expected.
** He has since disgraced himself by being a Putinista. And so it goes.
