The Illusion of Control

Kate McKinnon, Saturday Night Live

Canvassing for Hillary, I was paired with a neighbor who is in every way admirable. If I had a daughter, I would want her to grow up to be just like this woman.

When we were not knocking on doors, she was back at Hampton Democratic headquarters working the phone banks, calling for Hillary.
Most of the time people she called did not even answer the phone, so she called using her personal cell phone, and sometimes they answered but finding she was calling about the election, they were most often not receptive.
Most of the doors we knocked on were not answered. Frequently, we could see people approach from behind windows or doors and seeing we were canvassers, they did not answer.

He's not listening to us

People here in New Hampshire were more often annoyed by our harassment, our attempts at friendly persuasion.
One man demanded to see our permit to solicit, which he insisted is required in the town of Hampton. Of course, he had just made that up. Or he had heard we needed a permit from Breitbart or from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. We could have pointed out to him no town is allowed to pass a law or ordinance which forbids either political or religious canvassing: It's a Supreme Court Case, "Watchtower vs Village of" Something. You can outlaw solicitation for commercial purposes, but not for political or religious evangelism.

Who Is In Control Here?

We never saw a single Trump canvasser in Hampton, New Hampshire or in any of the other towns where we canvassed and only once did we find door nob literature from the Trump campaign. We frequently saw other Hillary canvassers in the streets and waved to them.
But we saw Trump lawn signs which outnumbered Hillary signs.
How did Trump do that? 
How did he reach and convince all those people who we met who were already persuaded to vote for him?
This fact was beyond our control.  Mr. Trump was getting to and persuading people somehow and our old fashion methods were simply no match for whatever it was he was doing. 
Not that stopped us from trying.
I watched in amazement as my partner in canvassing listened to a man who we had down on our computer list as a Democrat and likely Hillary voter. He said he was voting for Trump. Why? Because we need to build a wall. Why did he think that would work? He didn't know. We just needed a wall. But you know, they would just go around it. Well, Hillary is a crook. Why did he believe that?  
My partner patiently listened and without getting in his face, played the role of a loving older sister who was sympathetic to his pain and his anger but was trying to bring him back to the right place. 
Finally, as we left, he said, "Well, of course, he'll probably start World War Three."
"Then we know how you have to vote," she said.
"Yeah, I guess."

"He'll probably change his mind," I told her.
"Maybe," she said. "Or maybe not."
"There aren't enough of us to get to every one of them and do this."
"I know," she said. "But what else am I going to do? Sit home? Give up?"
The cast of "Hamilton" tried to make a statement to Mr. Pence. 
Did they think they would emancipate his mind about gay marriage, the value of diversity?
"Well," another friend told me, "You just cannot allow Trump to be normalized." 
But what does that mean? 

If we protest in front of Trump tower before he has called for a single piece of legislation, we are protesting his campaign rhetoric, which he disavows almost as soon as he says it, if he can remember what he just said a few minutes earlier.
If Trump says, "Muslims all hate us."
If General Flynn, his new National Security Adviser says, "Fear of Muslims is rational," and if we can grab a microphone, then we can object. 
The problem is, we cannot grab the microphone.
And the trouble with Trump is he says so many things and says them so fast, so stream of consciousness and his positions are forgotten so fast, it's hard to register objections.

The fact is, we cannot change the minds of those coal miners in Pennsylvania or those assembly line workers in Wisconsin whose factories have shut down. 
There aren't enough of us to sit down with each one and persuade them.
There are things beyond our control, as private citizens, out here in the hustings. 
Either the Democrats will find someone, will find a voice, or they will not. 
But little acts of defiance, individual statements of protest will not alter the direction of this freight train. 

Big demonstrations in the 60's did not alter the freight train of war. Elections did.
The Weathermen felt the impotence of not being in the majority, not being in power, and they blew things up, buildings, and one explosion killed a janitor, but it did nothing to stop the war.

Sometimes an image can start an awakening 

Trump does not control everything. He may not even be able to control his adoring crowds.  He certainly does not control what just over half of the people who voted think.  

He has power now, and largely unchecked power.
But if he is brought to heel, in any way, it won't be from actions from us little people, the little people who pay the taxes and go to work every day, and go man the phone banks. It will be from people in positions of at least some power, like Bernie Sanders. 

King Joffrey, Uneasy rests the head the wears the crown.

Reading the biography of John Randolph, one can see this play out in the early days of our republic. Randolph hated the idea of a central (federal) government which had the power to affect things in his home state of Virginia. He hated the idea of a standing army, which could be used to exert the will of a government outside Virginia on practices in Virginia. He hated the idea of a Supreme Court which could invalidate laws passed by Congress because he presciently perceived the Court was simply an unelected political instrument of the President who appointed the justices. He opposed the idea of adding new Congressmen to the House of Representatives as new states joined the union because with each new state, he saw Virginia would become less important and less powerful.  And he hated the idea of a federal government which could add a 38% tariff to imports from Britain which would hurt the export of Southern cotton once Britain responded to this. 

Randolph opposed a resolution sponsored by Henry Clay and John Calhoun, which would simply have declared America's sympathy for Greece as it tried to assert its independence from the Ottoman Empire, centered in Islamic Turkey. We have no understanding of this conflict and less understanding of Muslims, he said. We should stay out of such entanglements. 

Sometimes images are powerful

We are still arguing the same issues today, in one form or another. 
But even John Randolph, who debated Daniel Webster and Henry Clay, who was a force in the House of Representatives, was unable to control the direction of our government, which inexorably moved toward a central, federal government which could over rule state laws.  And he was in Congress.
In a republic, we do not have a direct voice. We don't even elect our President directly.  We have a system, ironically, put in place to prevent a reckless choice of the unwashed ignorant masses, moved by passions, and that very system has ensured that is exactly the President we got.

But it is not under our individual control. 
It's not that we should be singing, "It Don't Worry Me," but no number of speeches on Broadway, protests on Fifth Avenue or in the Pacific Northwest will slow the freight train headed toward Washington, D.C.