Saturday, September 24, 2016

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...:

Note to some fellow lefties...

Students from Johnson C. Smith University at a rally for Hillary Clinton in Charlotte, North Carolina. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times        
Sorry to say, rapacious capitalism will still be here in November. Not only that, but I doubt it will ever be simply voted out. Even if a "socialist" like Bernie were to someday be elected (I wish). But maybe that's just old-school me.

Whatever the case, come the first of the year, either Hillary Clinton, or Donald Trump, will be our next president and Jill Stein and Gary Johnson will have taken their campaign funds and gone home, a la Ralph Nader and the rest of those perennial presidential spoiler candidates.

That's when the real movement for social justice, peace and racial equality needs to kick into gear again -- after the election, no matter who is elected.

NYT columnist Charles Blow, speaking to Morgan State Univ. students, tries to break through the reported millennial political malaise and encourage a large youth turnout for Clinton.


First — and this cannot be said enough — Clinton and Trump are not equally bad candidates. One is a conventional politician who has a long record of public service full of pros and cons. The other is a demagogic bigot with a puddle-deep understanding of national and international issues, who openly courts white nationalism, is hostile to women, Mexicans and Muslims, and is callously using black people as pawns in a Donnie-come-lately kinder-gentler campaign.
As an educator, I would also include Trump's pledge to do away with public education or what Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Note to some fellow lefties...: