John Kerry's Dog, the Tale of 74 Million and Why It's Time for a New Formation on the Left -- Or, Put on a Pussyhat, Mr. Secretary

I've gotten to like John Kerry a bit more. I wasn't impressed in 2004 when, predictable though it may have been, he and his campaign descended into a lot of self-promotional, flag-waving stuff about his war record, he couldn't take down the stationary target that was George Bush, Jr., his campaign projected a vast air of privilege and the candidate himself exhibited a maddening propensity to gravitate centerwards on wide variety of issues. The last point may be a Democratic disease; contrary to what many on the right would tell you, the U.S.' version of a center-left party is hardly a raging bunch of socialists. Still, like many in the Obama Administration -- not the least of whom was Obama himself -- Kerry found his mettle in the face of Donald Trump. American's foreign minister spent not a small portion of his international political capital in the days since November 8 making it clear to the world that it was his opinion that rightward lurches were no good for anyone and that politics based on border closures and hyper-nationalism didn't improve chances for global peace -- wherein it became clear that, at the end of the day, international concord was in fact the goal of the American administration over the past eight years. Kerry's words were like a cool glass of water: they tasted awfully good after a damn long time in the sauna, especially a sauna smelling of old socks. Decoder ring: "damn long time in the sauna" means all the months we had to listen to Trump. "Old socks" concerns the quality of what he has had to say.

Of course, Trump has now been sworn in. As much as it might feel like it, that's neither rumor nor illusion. The man is president and, for better or worse, he's there legitimately. Now, 12 million more people did not vote for Trump than did -- something that's not easy to remember when he frequently crows about how "badly" he beat his opponents and, even when the news media raises the fact that Trump lost the popular vote, they only refer to the 2.8 million more votes received by Hillary Clinton as opposed to Trump. Obviously, 2.8 million is a lot of votes -- Bush, Jr., e.g., received about 500,000 fewer votes than Al Gore the last time we had a President who lost the popular vote. It is important to remember, though, that the Green Party came up a hair short of 1.5 million votes (1.5 million is about the size of the Austrian city Vienna), the Libertarian Party, with its free pot, ultra-liberal civil liberties agenda, came up a hair short of 4.5 million votes (roughly the size of greater Berlin), the Party for Socialism and Liberation with its ticket of Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear scored 75,000 votes (the size of a great number of American county seats), Bernie Sanders, who helped nominate Hillary Clinton, got 111,000 votes and anti-Trump Republican Evan McMullen got about the same number of votes as there are residents in the Swedish capital of Stockholm (about 750,000 [I'm not even counting the few million other write-ins]). I.e., a great many people didn't want Trump, and in both numerical reality and spirit, the man enters office as a minority President. That's the American system, though. Unless Trump is found guilty of some kind of maleficence or one does want to start an armed revolt, we'll have to live with his occupancy of the White House -- that until 2020, anyway.

Still, resistance -- perhaps the resistance -- emerged Saturday. Now, "emerged Saturday" might not be a fair characterization. I spent the bulk of Autumn 2016 on America's West Coast, and one can be dang sure that in cities from Portland to Seattle, people came heavily into the streets immediately after the November 8 results were announced to make it clear that they had no interest in the Trumpian worldview. Indeed, people in Portland and Seattle were but doing what no small number of people were doing all over the country, "from the Redwood Forests to the Gulfstream Waters," as the song goes. But my goodness; if the past few months has been a haze for the left and involved more than a few progressives staring into the bottom of empty liquor bottles, Saturday, they seem to have collectively drunk a glass of four raw eggs and started in on one of those Rocky-like training/workout scenes, replete with inspirational horn music and running up the stairs in front of some city hall in sweats to pump their fists in the air while looking triumphantly over the cityscape. Donning millions of "Pussyhats" and wielding signs saying things like "Fight Like a Girl" with the "A" in the anarchist circle, women and their allies from New York to Los Angeles to Anchorage to Lawrence, Kansas came out into the streets in what can only be described as droves, taking the fight right to Trump. It was cathartic. There were massive seas of pink as women and their allies took charge of the political day. Generations of women travelled together, with husband, boyfriends and partners often in support. I know, I know; the Women's Marches supposedly weren't anti-Trump. But, oh, they were. They went directly after the man and everything he stood for. Right on his front door.

The question that runs through a lot of the news cycle these days is "What Will the Democrats Do?" I.e., the Democratic Party is the main opposition party now, and there has been a lot of pseudo-tough talk about "fighting back" and "resisting" the Trump agenda coming from the party's leadership and central personalities. Some of the Party's important figures came out Saturday. Elizabeth Warren, senior Senator from Massachusetts, addressed the crowds at the Boston Women's March, declaring she was there to "fight back." Freshman Senator Kamala Harris of California spoke to the Washington march, asking protestors to "make today a beginning." New York Senator Kirstin Gillibrand did the same, saying that the point of hitting the streets, whether in Los Angeles or Los Alamos, was to stand up for "women's and civil rights." Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota met constituents and posed for pictures -- smiles all around. The Obamas, though, who are immensely popular, didn't take their Marine helicopter to a D.C. suburb, grab a breather and show up and the head of the march. They went off into quiet retreat in Palm Springs, California. Hillary Clinton, the supposed "change-maker" who sought to shatter that "highest of glass ceilings" but managed to Tweet; she was, as she herself noted, "scrolling" through images of the Women's March. John Kerry donned a furry bomber jacket and appeared with what seems to be a particularly well-trained Golden Retriever. Top congressional Democrat Chuck Schumer did show up at proceedings in New York. However, he's largely been reduced to offering platitudes like those he did on George Stephanopoulos' This Week in which he declared the intense protests that broke out not only in the U.S. but all over the world as part of a "Grand...Tradition" (thanks for the history lesson, Chuck). In the meantime, cabinet confirmation hearings proceed. There are overtures to working with Trump when possible (infrastructure and opposition to the TPP are popular items in this regard). Despite, yes, some cutting moments with Trump's nominees (Betsy DeVos got it pretty good for knowing little about laws and standards surrounding public schools), there's been a lot of "he-he and haw-haw" as well. Indeed, though the man gained office on a campaign of culturally if not legally disenfranchising ranges of minorities, there's a continuing engagement with parliamentary procedure and apparent collegiality in which it appears that, while Trump's views may be personally distasteful for many sitting in the United States' lawmaking bodies, there's a willingness to play along with the man's claim to legitimacy even though he seems to have a patently difficult time recognizing the legitimacy of anyone other than those from whom he simply hears a "yes." Free speech, one might remember, does extend to all citizens. Al Franken, funny though he may be, doesn't have to crack jokes with Rick Perry or meet him in his free time to gain further information about the man (hasn't Perry been around long enough such that we know that essence of his views?). Diane Feinstein could do more than just text that she appreciates her "sisters" when they march -- she could at least send someone from her office to grab a bull horn and walk at the front of their ranks. No one put the Democratic leadership at gun point and said "attend the inauguration" (though one worries it might come to that one day). One can sit stony faced and say "I refuse to countenance any statement, policy position or attempt to formulate a government based on views explicitly oriented towards undermining people's sense of security and denying recognitions of universal personhood." Being a member of the American government or the member of a major American political party doesn't obligate one to play nice. As more than a few hats, placards and tee-shirts said Saturday, one can be -- can be, anyway -- a "pussy" that "grabs back."

Now, the funny thing is -- and I want to be careful about overusing the phrase, provocative though it is -- it appears that there's a heck of a large segment of the American polity, of all genders, races and creeds, wanting to be "pussies" that "grab back." There appears to be an extensive number of Americans who are darn willing to go right up to Trump and his coterie and tell them what they can do with their policies and so-called "movement." Those members of the American polity were there Saturday, in the streets. This was not "let's ask some perhaps-somewhat-provocative questions at a Senate hearing but then accept the results of the votes we know are coming." This was not saying "I'm ready for the fight" and then only "fighting" to a certain degree. This was saying "I reject, and I won't acquiesce." This was saying "I won't play along, and I'll take control of public space and discourse when I see fit or feel that I need." This was not just a mild reminder of equal rights and universal humanity. It was an insistence, near-existentially so, on the recognition of such things -- and a taking of some of them in the process. And, indeed, that radicalism -- that insistence on recognition -- was tied directly to a segment of the American polity that does not necessarily operate within the catechism of "well, if one party's not in power, than the other one is." The clarion call of the Women's March -- harkening to counter-cultural figures such as Angela Davis, who spoke, as well as the asymmetrical anti-authoritarianism of postmodern politics (represented in the mode of protest [Pussyhats? Yeah!]) -- was to a radical thinking exceeding any nation and its constitution; it was to modes of opposition and the asking for futures of care, practices denouncing hierarchy and the suggestion of social formations not always fitting nicely into boxes of middle-class liberalism or minimal realizations of rights. The concentration of voice felt like a call for something more maximal -- something more global in which traditional social formations that bring certain hierarchies are formally denounced and then laid on the table to be deconstructed in ways such that they can't come back. Put plainly, Saturday appeared a joining of forces: mainstream Democrats with the left-wing of that party together again with coalitions of activists playing well outside the boundaries of the party of the candidate who received 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump. I.e., the kind of resistance and activism that emerged over the weekend seemed to take us into decidedly different parts of the 74 million people who did not support the strutting, insulting braggadocio that, unfortunately, did collect 62 million-plus votes (Trump). The center of gravity Saturday wasn't the center of the Democratic Party or the politics of American consensus. Saturday's fulcrum was rather more to the left -- more towards something social- and radical-democratic; more towards the construction of a more thoroughly radical alternative than usual, two-party Amero-politics tends to present.

I grant: the reality of 2016 may be that Donald Trump hit a nerve. Trump activated enough energy from a patriarchal, nationalist right -- perhaps conjoined to certain legitimate economic concerns (or an imagination of potentially legitimate economic concerns) -- that a particular sector of the American populace spoke with a louder voice than one might expect. Trump may have not found a large enough "silent minority" such that one might call it a "silent majority."  Again, except in a universe where gravity is reversed, 62 million votes never outnumbers 74 million. Trump may have found a pissed-off-enough minority, however, that when they activated their vocal chords, the cacophony that ensued became loud enough to drown a lot else out. That's a motley chorus based in real anger -- an anger manifesting itself in a heck of a lot of places in the world. From France to Germany to America to Denmark, a lot of people want to shut borders and start declaring who belongs and who "doesn't." There's a lot of intense identity-staking and, because of the force of the articulations involved -- the often flat-out level of emotion to which they're bound -- resisting such ideas will take force itself. It will take something beyond vague assertions that one is "fighting" by asking what at the end of the day wind up being polite questions from one side or the other of senatorial daises according to the rules of hearings or legislative procedure. It means adopting stony-faced visages and not offering to play along. It means looking broadly and more radically for allies across the political spectrum and moving one's center of gravity to political locales where one's actions can't be interpreted in any other way other than that one is resisting. A thorough resistance means not insisting that one is somehow being "impractical" if one stands outside long-accepted structures -- that especially as the formations that are traditionally claimed as the "legitimate left" don't seem to be able to formulate a message that resonates forcefully enough to offer alternatives to what has become a highly activated alt-right. Both in America and in the world, the Democratic Party has had its place. From Roosevelt to Kennedy to Johnson to Carter and Clinton, the Party has made meaningful contributions to civil rights and international institutions. The Democratic Party's center right now, however, is neither the real center of gravity of social resistance nor, judging from this weekend's marches, the apparent center of real wins (which Saturday was). The construction of a real D/democratic resistance will come from either a radical reformulation of America's center-left part along social democratic lines, or the construction of an entirely new formation on the left  less interested in acquiescence to vested interests and things "as is": Big Bill Haywood meets Occupy, perhaps. The right end of the new left spectrum might begin with types like Elizabeth Warren. My guess, though, is that the center of the new American left begins somewhere rather more to the port side than that.

I appreciate John Kerry coming to the Washington Women's March with his dog. Kerry strolled through some of the crowds, shaking hands and engaging in some useful solidarity. It was in tack with a strong ending as Secretary of State. He was walking with a dog, though, and, man, fur-collared bomber jackets at a demo? Ditch the dog and put on a Pussyhat, Mr. Secretary. That'll put you and your party exactly where you need to be.