10th November 2016, 9:06 PM
We can sit here and argue from here until inauguration over who would have fared better. (Believe me, I would LOVE to do that right now. Learning from past mistakes matters, and recognizing what mistakes were made is the first part of that.)
I've come to believe the only way to help our country right now though is to focus on what we can actually do from this rather awful state we're now in. I could hope for a miracle (I just daydreamed a scenario where Trump is visited by 3 ghosts on Christmas Eve and completely mends his ways, going on to become the greatest president the US, nay, the WORLD, has ever seen), but instead let's focus on that electoral college workaround. (That MUST be in the public eye, and talked about on the major comedy shows for months to come, or it'll be forgotten. That's reality.) Let's focus on suggesting ACTUAL solutions to rural America's issues. Those would be the issues that drove them all to vote when as a group they never cared to vote for either candidates in past elections, and the group that won Trump the presidency. Trump, as he is now, is going to fail them all. Let's suggest real plans that can save rural America. I'm not talking about hand-outs, because most rural Americans don't want that. They want self sufficiency. Surely we can figure out systems that don't require us to spread out massive infrastructure across most of the US just to help them. (And no, suggesting all of them just move to the city is a horrible idea. No one wants to abandon everyone they've ever known just to survive. Many would rather die.) This is only a skeleton of an idea, but I've been thinking about setting up a plan of support that resembles the circulatory system somewhat. Rather than a small town in trouble only being able to petition the capital of their state for aid, small towns would have a network of aid they could call on from towns and cities close to them. Proximity is everything here. They would be people they might have seen passing through, or people they've met going to those towns themselves now and then. They would know each other, and since it would be a group of towns offering aid, the burdon would be split. This would extend on up branches with the capital of that state as a main artery. Similarly, states could ask the immediately surrounding states for aid with a much more direct system in place before needing to directly petition the US government for aid. Heck, such a system would make people naturally interested in the welfare of those around them on a larger scale, which is something humans struggle with. Additionally, bringing jobs back home has always been a major complaint of small towns, and they're right. Without actual work, they can't really sustain themselves, and factories are where that work come from. Set some real limits on how many jobs US based companies can send overseas. This sounds isolationist, but at the same time it also puts pressure on countries like China to fix their own humanitarian issues. If American companies are forced by US law to pay workers, no matter the country, the same wages whether they do it overseas or here, chinese companies lose a little of that motivation to treat their own employees so badly to keep those wages down in the first place. Along those lines, while my own state did vote against that ridiculous "right to farm" law that's been making the rounds lately (it basically would let farmers, or more accurately the companies that pay the farmers, to sue away regulation after regulation on farming practices), there should be an actual set of laws protecting farmers. Not from regulations, exactly, but from companies that exploit them. I was disgusted to find out how many farmers actually would prefer NOT to torture their livestock if they could help it, but are essentially forced to by draconian requirements of the massive companies that hire their services. Since those massive companies are practically the only way small time farmers can even sell their goods any more, they're pushed into a corner in a lot of ways.
This isn't to ignore the vast other injustices faced by so many in the US, but to acknowledge we've got another group that needs to be added to the list. Along the way, perhaps they can learn that those they thought were their enemies never were to begin with. How can all this be done? At this point, we've got to start locally, and branch out from there. The top down approach isn't going to work with the republicans in charge, so building such networks will have to start from the bottom up. While the highest levels were being won, I watched a number of bills at the lowest levels go the way of progressives. That's our "in", the bottom.
I've come to believe the only way to help our country right now though is to focus on what we can actually do from this rather awful state we're now in. I could hope for a miracle (I just daydreamed a scenario where Trump is visited by 3 ghosts on Christmas Eve and completely mends his ways, going on to become the greatest president the US, nay, the WORLD, has ever seen), but instead let's focus on that electoral college workaround. (That MUST be in the public eye, and talked about on the major comedy shows for months to come, or it'll be forgotten. That's reality.) Let's focus on suggesting ACTUAL solutions to rural America's issues. Those would be the issues that drove them all to vote when as a group they never cared to vote for either candidates in past elections, and the group that won Trump the presidency. Trump, as he is now, is going to fail them all. Let's suggest real plans that can save rural America. I'm not talking about hand-outs, because most rural Americans don't want that. They want self sufficiency. Surely we can figure out systems that don't require us to spread out massive infrastructure across most of the US just to help them. (And no, suggesting all of them just move to the city is a horrible idea. No one wants to abandon everyone they've ever known just to survive. Many would rather die.) This is only a skeleton of an idea, but I've been thinking about setting up a plan of support that resembles the circulatory system somewhat. Rather than a small town in trouble only being able to petition the capital of their state for aid, small towns would have a network of aid they could call on from towns and cities close to them. Proximity is everything here. They would be people they might have seen passing through, or people they've met going to those towns themselves now and then. They would know each other, and since it would be a group of towns offering aid, the burdon would be split. This would extend on up branches with the capital of that state as a main artery. Similarly, states could ask the immediately surrounding states for aid with a much more direct system in place before needing to directly petition the US government for aid. Heck, such a system would make people naturally interested in the welfare of those around them on a larger scale, which is something humans struggle with. Additionally, bringing jobs back home has always been a major complaint of small towns, and they're right. Without actual work, they can't really sustain themselves, and factories are where that work come from. Set some real limits on how many jobs US based companies can send overseas. This sounds isolationist, but at the same time it also puts pressure on countries like China to fix their own humanitarian issues. If American companies are forced by US law to pay workers, no matter the country, the same wages whether they do it overseas or here, chinese companies lose a little of that motivation to treat their own employees so badly to keep those wages down in the first place. Along those lines, while my own state did vote against that ridiculous "right to farm" law that's been making the rounds lately (it basically would let farmers, or more accurately the companies that pay the farmers, to sue away regulation after regulation on farming practices), there should be an actual set of laws protecting farmers. Not from regulations, exactly, but from companies that exploit them. I was disgusted to find out how many farmers actually would prefer NOT to torture their livestock if they could help it, but are essentially forced to by draconian requirements of the massive companies that hire their services. Since those massive companies are practically the only way small time farmers can even sell their goods any more, they're pushed into a corner in a lot of ways.
This isn't to ignore the vast other injustices faced by so many in the US, but to acknowledge we've got another group that needs to be added to the list. Along the way, perhaps they can learn that those they thought were their enemies never were to begin with. How can all this be done? At this point, we've got to start locally, and branch out from there. The top down approach isn't going to work with the republicans in charge, so building such networks will have to start from the bottom up. While the highest levels were being won, I watched a number of bills at the lowest levels go the way of progressives. That's our "in", the bottom.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)