Trump's "Religious Liberty" Fail Shows That He Can Be Stopped
As a real-estate developer, President Donald Trump was no doubt used to saying "Build It!" and, after dispensing with pesky zoning and NIMBY matters, getting others to do so forthwith.
Not so with his Muslim ban and, now, his nixed "religious liberty" executive order to discriminate against LGBTQs and women who had abortions and/or used contraceptives.
Months after the religious right's orgasmic anticipation of Trump's gift to them, the "thrice-married, porn-loving, pussy-grabbing" creep totally disappointed them. The recent executive order was widely seen as a banal reassertion of current law, and not the wholesale assault on equal employment rights and access to public accommodations that religious bigots lobbied heavily for and wanted.
There are three important lessons for the left to draw from this:
1 ) Right-wing creepsincluding "the most powerful man in the world," aka U.S. presidentscan be defeated through popular mobilizations.
The social movements of the 1960s exemplified this a generation ago in defeating the most ideologically right-wing president seen in modern times: Richard Nixon. Forcing a wind-down of the U.S. war in Southeast Asia, the enactment of affirmative action and food stamps, the legalization of abortion, and a wave of environmental legislation such as the Clean Air and Clean Water Actstime and again, Nixon was forced to do things he didn't want to.
2 ) The catastrophic pronouncements of some on the left that a Trump presidency meant the inauguration of fascism, or something close to it, are once again shown to be cartoonish. If Trump truly was der Fuhrer, he would have ordered the bigoted change, and simply rounded up or murdered any who stood in his way.
Fortunately, the fact that we still do have ( yes, quite circumscribed ) formal democracy means that we can speak out, protest and take more aggressive direct action and live to take action another day. And in this case we can winall without seriously risking life and limb. In a true fascist state, any individual, including even ruling-class people, who publicly voiced the mildest opposition would have found themselves imprisoned, if not dead.
3 ) As the Nixon example shows, what is won today is never permanent under capitalism. While we won many things despite Nixon, we lost many of them during subsequent administrations, both Democratic and Republican. So while we have defeated Trump for now, we will have to fight hard against him and his successors to preserve this win, and we won't ultimately guarantee it until we live in a society that is truly democratically run by everyoneand that values everyone.
Gay Liberation Network