By now, everybody understands Trump's method: attack one individual at a time with the combined power of the presidency and the hate crimers. The guy who just stood up is a union leader (talkingpointsmemo.com/...) and the hate crimers are already calling his home phone to threaten his kids.
Should we be surprised that Jeff Bezos and WaPo failed to fight back? I nearly subscribed to WaPo but ever since Trump's attacks, they've been running at least one craven story every day. Their reporting on Trump's flag burning tweet (I won't link to it here) was especially cowardly.
Should we be surprised that the NY Times caved in to Trump? They had already caved on Bush (www.alternet.org/...) so it's not a surprise.
What about Boeing? After a Boeing exec criticized Trump (talkingpointsmemo.com/...), Trump threatened to not pay for a new Air Force One. As Kossack Xaxnar explained (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/12/7/1608500/-About-Air-Force-One), Trump cannot substitute his own jet for Air Force One because Air Force One is a mobile, EMP-proof, military command center. So the threat was ignorant and pointless. But it worked. The CEO of Boeing called him. The message is this: criticize Trump and your stock will tank; call him to make a deal and give him a good headline, and you're okay.
Trump signaled this much earlier with CNN, which is part of Time Warner. On Oct. 22, at a critical moment in the campaign, Trump threatened to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger (money.cnn.com/...). Now, he'll let it happen (fortune.com/...). Why the change? Just look at the CNN coverage, and you have the answer. (Here's just one example: CNN journalist suspended for having the wrong bias, not for being biased www.dailykos.com/...).
So kudos to Chuck Jones, the president of United Steelworkers 1999. He had more courage than CNN, the NY Times, Bezos and WaPo, and Boeing Corporation. The next few years will show us who has courage and who does not. The majority will lack courage.
And the violence will target Dems at every level of government. In Finland, a 23 year old gunman recently killed the city council chair of a small suburban town and two journalists (www.mirror.co.uk/...). All three victims were women. The police say the attack was random. The city councilwoman, Tiina Wilén-Jäppinen, was socialist, from a party that is stronger in small towns than in national government. Does this pattern seem familiar? She was from the Social Democratic Party (en.wikipedia.org/...), which has 21% of local government, but 16% of the national parliament (I'm not sure whether that's seats or vote totals).
There is a global wave of violence aimed at democrats, at union leaders, at people who are our heroes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++(positivity)
Wow! Thanks everybody! A front page diary just posted a link to Sanders’ next move: ourrevolution.com. Do something positive, whether it’s Sanders-inspired or not.