A few days back the New York Times published some profiles of Americans who were so alarmed by the state of the country, after Trump's election, that they quit their day jobs to go work for places trying to do something about it. Probably the most notable thing about it was that until this point, it wasn't clear there was anyone left in America worth interviewing other than middle-aged Trump supporters from the Midwest whose views on race would be delicately danced around by a reporter trying his or her level best to dodge that can of worms in favor of said supporter's theories that Trump will make the trains run on time.
But that's just me being a cynical bastard. The actual profiles are of people fed up enough to abandon long-term careers in order to, in some small way, set America right again.
“It feels like we are in this existential crisis of democracy,” said Matt Ewing, who abandoned a career at SolarCity to join Swing Left, a group hoping to get out the vote in competitive congressional districts in 2018. “Going back to work in my comfortable corporate job didn’t make sense anymore.”
And then there's the Republicans fed up with Trump, the ones who stood by the party all through the years as it became a den of conspiracy theories and crass party-firstism but who are outraged, I say outraged, when Trump rode the party's frothing cravenness, open racism and notions of women as second-class citizens right through the Oval Office door. And then there's this tool, who appears to get a "private citizen becomes involved with politics" profile only because the Times lost a bet.
As an editor at The Wall Street Journal last year, Mr. Carney watched admiringly as upstart media outlets, including Breitbart, the conservative website previously controlled by Steve Bannon, a Trump adviser, channeled the energy behind Mr. Trump’s political rise.
Wow, a Wall Street Journal editor so impressed by Trump that he up'n'quit his news gig to go work for the alt-right tools pumping out the the racism, misogyny and conspiracy theories in the first place? That is a career change. It's like quitting your job as McDonalds cashier because you can't stand the thought of someone else grinding up all those cow anuses without you getting your two hands in the machinery.
All right, that one was a bit of a downer—again, I blame myself. Let's close with the guy who quit a high-paying job at Oracle over the company's cozying up to Trump. He's founded a new nonprofit that he hopes will motivate more Americans to make their voices heard.
“Former paydays are now days of mourning at my house,” [George Polisner] said. “But I would rather do something of high value to society and earn less money than I would have my soul purchased every two weeks with a big check.”
All right, so what's the lessons here? Part of it is that, indeed, it's never too late to change careers. Part of it is that there are indeed many, many people in the world who are not folksy racists looking to turn back the clock to 1952. Not enough to fill out an entire New York Times piece all on their own with no fillers, heavens no, but a good supply.
But you know something? You don't have to quit your career to oppose Trump, or the propagandists, or the closet racists, or the open racists, or the science-deniers or the Who Would Jesus Deny Refuge To freaks or the conspiracy thinkers or the wonkless wonks drafting up the latest reason why filthy-rich America can't possibly do all those things America was doing just fine, until Ronald Reagan decided the richest among us were to be unopposed kings of us all. Go to a rally and you'll have Trump's immediate attention. Attend a meeting with your elected official—don't just email, show up at the town halls, and if your congresscritter is a Republican coward ducking town halls then make sure the whole district knows it. Find someone running for office who's a decent human being and, for the love of God, donate to the cause of getting them into office.
Rich people may own America, but they can't stand having to shell out dough for it; as the Ossoff race showed, you can nickel-and-dime them right back to even ground. Donald Trump may have won his election, but that doesn't mean you can't spend your days pointing out to the Trump supporters in your life, after every broken campaign "promise" and halfwit Oval Office fumbling, that they got played like fiddles.
You don't have to get your own New York Times profile. If because of you ten more people vote in the next election who didn't vote in the last, you've changed America. That's something right there.
