Heidi Hartmann, a respected friend of mine, recently wrote to me on the presidential election in the US. She showed a serious concern about the world with President Trump. As one representative opinion on Trump, I would like to share her comment on the WAN website with her permission.
About the author: a prominent Marxist feminist, author of “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism.” Currently President of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research based in Washington D.C. (Chizuko Ueno)

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Heidi Hartmann, President, Institute for Women’s Policy Research

The election then happened here and the horrible result has really thrown all of us into a great depression. We feel just like the more educated and cosmopolitan people in Britain felt when BREXIT won by a narrow vote, but I think it is worse in the US, because the damage Trump can do in the US is huge, especially as he may be able to shape the Supreme Court for decades. And sometimes in my darkest moments, I do wonder if it is the beginning of a totalitarian takeover here. He is appointing many generals as well as many uber capitalists, and so many things could be overturned, our health care plan that finally Obama got, abortion rights, just about everything, because the Republicans control both houses of Congress now as well as the White House.

It is crazy that we still have this old fashioned electoral college that takes the presidential vote away from the popular total (Hillary got almost 3 million more votes than Trump), but it takes a constitutional amendment I think to change it—anyway, it will be difficult to change because all the small population states love it! I know it can be fashionable for some to think there is no difference between Trump and Clinton, and that it doesn’t matter, but I fear it will matter to many people in their daily lives, especially undocumented immigrants who may be rounded up and deported in even greater numbers than before.

I feel worst for the people between about 15 and 30 years of age, most of them really only knew Obama as their president and thought we lived in a progressive country: health care and same sex marriage all became universal under Obama. This age group is very progressive and believes strongly in a multi-cultural and tolerant society and I don’t think that understood that there were that many forces of reaction here. I think they just assumed that Clinton could and would win, that woman who shares their values could of course be elected. Plus both Barack and Michelle were a beacon of grace and cool to so many—they really understood and used popular culture in a way that appealed to the young especially. (In fact the age divide was very large in the election with Trump winning the 45+ and Hillary the under 45’s). So they will be sorely missed (even though there are many aspects of Obama’s policies that I did not fully agree with). And I wouldn’t have loved everything Hillary would have done either, but I certainly supported her and went out on election day and worked for her in Pennsylvania.

How are you doing in Japan? Reasonably well I hope! Apparently Abe and Trump are going to get along! What is the world coming to?