A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
BABY STEPS
OK. I emailed my Representative, asking him to sign the letter opposing the appointment of Steve Bannon to the White House Staff. I joined Democratic Socialists of America [I know, I know, don't start], I renewed my subscription to the NAACP and also joined the NC branch, I donated $250 to Foster Campbell's run-off race for Senate in Louisiana, and I tried [unsuccessfully] to let UNC Philosophy let me use their distribution list to circulate the email I received and posted, as a first step to organizing a group here in Chapel Hill. None of this is significant, but if we all do these sorts of things, maybe we can create a wall of opposition to the horrors Trump is preparing to visit on this country.
We should add that when it comes to contacting your representatives, phone calls are the best way to do so. Especially phone calls to their office in the region they represent.
ReplyDeleteHere's a handy summary of some of the advice that's been going around social media on this topic: http://www.attn.com/stories/12814/people-are-using-this-script-to-call-their-representatives
Prof. Wolff,
ReplyDeleteI don’t mean to minimize your fears about what we can expect from the Trump Presidency. However, along with many dreadful things it is possible that something important and positive may also come about; namely, a big step in the direction of normalizing relations with Russia. To provide some important background information the following interview, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/emeritus-professor-russian-studies-stephen-cohen/ with Stephen Cohen, Emeritus Professor of Russian Studies at Princeton University is very much worth listening to for two reasons. One, he talks eloquently of the awful revival of something close to the Red Scare and McCarthyism that is going on at present in which anyone trying to say anything positive about Russia immediately gets smeared as a Putin puppet as the Clinton campaign did to Trump. Indeed the New York Times has been demonizing Russia for much of the past year. The second reason is that Cohen presents a picture of what the world looks like from the Russian point of view with NATO expanding to the very borders of Russia carrying with it the frightening possibility of a nuclear war with Russia. If Trump indeed follows through on his campaign promises and is able to put an end to the uncalled for and terribly dangerous hostility towards President Putin, he will have achieved something of great importance for which we should be grateful. Nothing of the sort could ever have been expected had Clinton won the election.
Robert Shore