So what do you do now? How do you fight back against all this?
1) We have an enemy in the White House.
2) That enemy is protected by his party which controls the Senate.
3) Enemy judges are latent throughout the judiciary.
4) The enemy funding all of this is unknown money.
5) Being neutral is not an option. One is either for the good of the people, or not.
This is pretty much a nutshell version where we find ourselves.
1)We need to change the person in charge. Every day of delay is another piece out of the fabric of our nation. Many will say Pence is just as bad…. in policy, maybe true; in cahoots with Putin,maybe true; a strict evangelical, maybe true. BUT he is not insane. We can deal with rational. But this “irrational”, has dropped everyone’s pensions and IRA almost 25% in December alone. This“irrational” just sold out our steadfast ally after taking a Turkish bath. As a nation we can be nice about his removal, we can be rude, we can even risk a civil war, but the bottom line is every one of those options are better than the status quo. All of them at least provide clarity and consistency over what is currently in place now.
2) The Republican Senate under McConnell has proven to be a “yes” vote for party only. There are signs of fraying, but the Russian troll army is vicious against all Republican defectors. We have two years before changes can be made through elections. Therefore we have to divide and conquer Republican Senators. Peel off those who may be inclined to vote against Trump. This can actually happen if all Americans re-engage with their Senators. Since most will not, it falls to all of us who are politically active to write, call, or text our Senators’ staffs, and entreat our them to convince their employer to vote for once in the interest of his state, instead of his party.
3) Enemy judges in the judiciary must be handled by future Presidents and a future Congress. There is nothing we can do. They are not responsive to public anger. Expect some legal bombs to fall, then use the craters to rally more fighters to your side, and work to change the Senate. If enough (67) Senators are Democrats,then along with the House after the next election, changes can be made regardless of who wins the 2020 presidential election.
4)Under current dark money laws, it is realistic that Russia could have paid for all Trumps ads. We may find that mostly true. Every day provokes a new tidbit that despite whether Republicans knew it or not, Russia ran the Republican campaign in 2016. Republicans may have thought they had a hand in running things, but if someone nudged them towards making certain decisions, were they really running things? We have no way of knowing which foreign power is funding which political advertisement after Citizens United. For now we must assume all Republican ads could be foreign sponsored now, and call them all out on that. Leave the burden of proof on others to prove these fake groups are not foreign subsidiaries. Obviously it would be suicide for Republicans to limit Russian money from entering their campaigns. Therefore they will not vote on change, so it must wait for a Democratic Senate. However Russian ads are inconsequential if they are completely ignored by all Americans. We all have a voice among our friends and after every Republican ad shared by us and someone else in earshot, we should say, “Bet Putin paid for that ad”, and let chips fall where they may. By now, particularly with a 25% drop in financials after the “tariff man”remark (Dec 3rd), it will be safe to assume the only entities putting money towards the Republican party after this month,will probably be Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey (maybe). Our default mechanism should be to treat every Republican ad as foreign propaganda; with a high probability, it probably is.
5) People tend to be neutral by default until pressed. There is no room for that now. Our new job is to press them. “Are you for Trump, or with the rest of the world?”. It is really our moral duty to get people off the shelf and into one camp or the other. Even if our pushing puts them in the other camp, it can be a good thing. They no longer get that free ride. Once they label themselves, they no longer skate unchecked. They are responsible to every negative he does. They begin paying a price for their new allegiance almost immediately. Too many Americans sat out the last election. Some will again, but we need to engage and make that a much smaller number.
Since Trump was elected, I‘ve carried a bit of wisdom since the days immediately after. That advice was simple: the lesson learned from Germany was that when a tyrant appears,everyone has to unite to defeat him, and they can... because at that time, there are many more of them than the tyrant’s supporters. But if they do what Germany did and fight among themselves first, in order to be the one in power who will then get to defeat him, they lose.
And today’s current threat to Democracy can gather a lot of people behind removing him. Hillary supporters, Bernie supporters, Biden supporters, Beto supporters, third way supporters,Blue Democrat supporters, progressives, pro farming, pro business,never-Trump Republicans, moderate Republicans, farmer Republicans, American Baptists, Hispanics, African Americans, Asians, American Russians, American Saudi’s, American Israelis; it makes no difference. Any attempt on these pages to divide us to fight each other, probably originates behind a desk in another country.
For heavens sakes,we worked with communist Russia to get rid of Nazi Germany. Do you think we can today, work with our potential future adversaries to get rid of the biggest threat America has ever faced?
And this is where the Christmas spirit came in. Realize there is so much hate in politics today. Just look at all other posts on social media. How many of them are full of hate? 90%? 85%? Yep, this is what we’ve become as a party and it is not productive. We have to focus on one man: the president of the United States of America. There is no time or room to ostracize, ignore, mistrust, and argue with anyone else who shares our view on this one topic.
At this point it would be wise to trust every meme or ad aimed at making us feel a flash of anger as being foreign generated. In fact, anything that distracts us from accomplishing our primary mission, which is to replace the current President of the United States as fast as possible, should be viewed as being of foreign origination. We should not be surprised to one day have it revealed that Rush Limbaugh was supported by foreign intelligence agencies. Or that Sinclair Enterprises is beholden to foreign interests . Or that Liberty College and other evangelical icons have secret foreign donations from questionable sources. All these are currently hypothetical but IF eventually proven true, they would sure provide a perspective of rationality to the irrationality of these groups we see today.
As Democrats going into 2020 we are going to have to become the “good guys” to get the high numbers of Democrats we need (67) in the Senate. To reach this we will need to win over some current Red States. To do so, we don’t need to compromise any of our democratic ideals; we need to just become so likable those voters can’t resist voting for us.
And this is where that gets funky in the nature of things Christmas. I’ll come right out and say it. Everything we need to do these next two years is to get Republican voters in Red States to love us. We don’t have to win all the time, but we do have to carry ourselves in such a way that all those watching us compete, love us. Which means if you are trolling Republicans on social media, stop.Russia is already doing it. Killing Russian trolls is ok; making real people mad is not. Remember when we govern we will need them, so show them respect as you explain why Democrats can help them better than Republicans ever could.
We have to be tough,with heart. “Heart” is the one thing the Republican party does not have, and can never get, because all the Ayn Rand shit their top brass believe.
So this Christmas, resolve to love your neighbor, love your country, and love what you can do to make it a better world for all. Remember we are still at war for the soul of this country. It is a war we must win. And we must have many different allies to make that winning a possibility. We probably do need a change in our approach. Swing Trump voters are not our enemies, just people who made a wrong decision after being given a lot of wrong information beforehand. After all, have you ever made a wrong decision based off wrong data? Of course. Did your boss fire you for it? You were probably forgiven, then given a second chance, and are successful today because of that act of forgiveness. Now …we have to be that forgiver for the better good of our country.
Although it is not original… we kinda need to love our enemies in order to bring about a much better world. We continue to fight very hard against what they believe, because it is necessary for everyone’s better future. After we win, we will no doubt tussle again over our different perspectives on little issues, once our American democracy is safe again. We can live with that.