Sixteen years ago, in 2008, on the day after Barack Obama was elected, Republican mucky-mucks got together and plotted to block everything the new President Elect wanted to do.
A leaked tape—that soon disappeared from the internet—showed them huddled together for days and nights. Christian Nationalists, most of them, they were diseased with fear of being replaced by mix-raced Americans and “brown-skin immigrants arriving from shit countries.” So they raged away for weeks: “How did this atrocity happen? How did a black man become the president of our great country?!”
They were hell-bent on never letting it or anything like it ever happen again. And so they began their meticulously planned and executed march towards Donald Trump’s 2024 victory over Democracy. They succeeded because they were crazy-determined and willing to do the longterm work.
Are we willing to do the longterm work? The tenacious, back-breaking work that it will take to shape a New Democracy? A army of diverse races, religions, genders, sexualities, educations, ethnicities and ages? It already exists here in America. (That’s why they’re losing their shit.)
We just need to claim Our America with the same blunt, unapologetic hunger that MAGA grabbed-up our 248-year-old Land of the Free.
I have asked myself if the MAGA/Trump win is a backlash to the “Me Too” movement? To the muscular advancements of feminism, culminating in women finally dispatching the legal system after men who sexually abused them (Thank God)?
After all, isn’t everything a reaction to an earlier action? I believe that’s how it works anyway. “To everything, a season,” “What comes round goes round.”
I believe we can still count on “Our Turn” coming around again. But will we be ready this time? I for one yearn to leave “Ms. and Mr. Well-Behaved Citizen” on the shelf so we can do what must be done with enough audacity and backbone to take on today ‘s harsh realities and win. The cop-out of “Well, we don’t want to be like them!” is blocking our good judgment and creativity. This isn’t a call for violence. That’s weak and pathetic. There are other powerful strategies, but they too take smarts and initiative. This is our destiny, our karma, our calling. It won’t happen without us. So, please, get up, dig in, join in—and let’s start rolling today!