One of the greatest calamities for democracy in my lifetime happened just last year, with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States. It was a shattering moment for the Democratic Party; they were reeling for months.
Election night had been an even bigger disaster for them than their failure to win the White House. Trump was sitting on majorities in both the Senate and the House. It looked like a dark day for progressive values.
The Trump Presidency is six months old.
It is mired in scandal, infighting, the institution itself has become a laughing stock.
Every week brings more shame, more insanity, more disgrace for America. In the last seven days, he gave a speech to the Boy Scouts which went from being the traditional one President’s give on honour, community and hard work to being a self-congratulatory rant, condemned by nearly every outlet and civic organisation; he’s sacked his press secretary and replaced him with a guy who’s opening day’s work was to threaten to execute leakers, and accuse the chief of staff of being one … cue the chief of staff’s sacking last night. On top of that was a speech to law enforcement officials where the man in the Oval Office openly, brazenly, encouraged police brutality against immigrants.
And it’s like this every week. If we think we have a soap opera on our hands here … man, oh man, you want to be following American politics right now. I had to take a breather from following Trump too closely, because it’s exhausting trying to do both.
But it’s not disheartening.
In fact, it provides for us the blueprint we need to fight our own corrupt leaders, and actually win. It’s all about people power, and if you really think it doesn’t work you only need to look across the Atlantic at how Trump’s government is in stasis.
They have not passed a single key piece of legislation, and as everyone knows the most productive time for a new government is in the first 12 months. Their efforts to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care bill were the latest to crash, defeated in the Senate on Thursday.
Remember, both Houses over there are run by Republicans … some of their own jumped the fence.
And why would they?
Most of these guys believe they were elected with a mandate to replace that hated law.
They did it because people forced them to.
Republican legislators have been turning up at public meetings, which are usually empty save for a few determined souls, to find rooms packed out with furious people. Their inboxes have been filling with venom and angry responses from folks who see the repeal of Obamacare without a ready made replacement as meaning they will lose crucial coverage.
And it has shamed Republican members – or scared them – into doing the right thing, and when that’s the result of action who really cares what motivates them?
I said in a piece here earlier in the week that only two things ever made a politician do something they weren’t keen on; fear and money.
Ordinary citizens don’t have access to money, but there’s an election looming next year and they can definitely bring the fear to bear, and that’s exactly what they’ve done.
They’ve used the power in their hands.
Scottish football fans have power too.
It’s manifested in attendance at games, in the purchasing of tickets, in the banners in the stands … it can be found in emails and letters and online blogs.
The people who run our game are corrupt to their bones, but the Republican’s make them look like the hopeless amatuers they are.
These are small-time scam artists. If the clubs weren’t so gutless they would never get away with it, and that’s the key.
Many of the clubs are run by spineless men who care not one bit for sporting integrity or anything else.
And you know what?
Those are the easiest people to move in the direction you want.
Appeal to their self interest or greed and you’ve got them.
And if anyone tries to tell you that it doesn’t work, direct them to Vox or The Atlantic or The Guardian or Salon on one of the dozens of websites where the anti-Trump forces have found their inspiration and support. Because there is no more powerful organisation on the planet than a Republican Party in control of the levers of government … and this one is being shut down at every turn by a people’s insurgency which has inspired an astonishing fight back.
It was Obama himself who famously said “Hope is real.” So have some. Believe in yourselves and in those others who are on the case. When people ask you, “Can we do this? Can we really do it?” there’s only one thing to tell them.
“Yes we can.”
And we will.