By the slimmest of painful margins, US Democrats
swung the House of Representatives back towards sanity. And while the effort
and the votes were huge the gains are fragile. We know from Presidential
elections that while the majority of Americans regularly vote Democrat, the Electoral
College voting system and the weighted voting to Southern states (a hangover
from the days of slavery) plus gerrymandering and voter suppression, often make
the difficult – impossible. But gaining The House of Representatives is something. Now American needs to exercise a
new top 'N' word – NO.
NO – to Trump’s white nationalism
NO – to racism and misogyny (this one already
looking hopeful - see my letter in The Guardian last week - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/08/how-much-progress-have-the-us-midterm-elections-brought
or a fuller version in The Scottish Herald
https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17212281.sweet-irony-in-native-american-victories-in-midterm-elections/ )
NO- to denying climate change
NO - to corruption, nepotism and abuse of power - etc...
When I turned the radio on early Nov 7th
the first thing I heard was that Ted Cruz had managed to hang on in Texas and I
was sweating for the next line. If someone as electable as Beto O Rourke
couldn’t unseat a spineless creep like Cruz, what chance did everyone else have.
Enough - it seems.
Here in the UK, if we only had some similar awakening
but Brexit trundles on its crushing destructive brainless way.
On a local level there is uproar here in Edinburgh
as 50 mature trees were chopped down in the small park area in front of Waverly train station to make way for extra temporary tourist Christmas tat - https://www.thenational.scot/news/17205567.letters-why-are-trees-being-felled-to-make-way-for-tat/
So – this side of the pond political folk are far
from WOKE.
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Remember to check out some books for Christmas@
Remember to check out some books for Christmas@