Forward and Backward
Ten years ago, I would never have considered myself a hateful person. I would have described myself as decent, kind, openminded, carefree, and happy.
The last 10 years have changed me into someone I almost don’t recognize. Like many of us, I’m not afraid to say that I hate what this country has become.
I hate Donald Trump and everything in the MAGA movement.
I hate that there are family members I can’t and don’t talk to anymore.
I hate being fearful for my grandchildren’s future.
I hate that my rights as a woman are being stripped... AGAIN.
I hate being suspicious of everyone I meet.
After being faced with 3 men on a street corner wielding AK 15s during a peaceful protest on Women’s Right to Choose, I hate that I am scared to participate in protests any longer.
Who is this hate filled and foreign person in my body? Where did I go and what can I do?
Recently a glimmer of light has started to flicker. A way back to common decency and shared goals and values. Democrats 101 has spoken to me, to my heart. An easy or quick fix? No. But a way forward? YES. A starting point.
An open letter from a red county Democratic Chair
Like many of you, I am a Democratic Party Chair in a very red rural county (Huron, Ohio) where just getting a Democrat to run for office is almost impossible. But, I look at my grandkids and think I have to do something. Something to begin the necessary conversations to raise awareness of the dangerous times we are in.
Those conversations cannot begin with policies. We have to reach common ground first. Freedom, Justice and Opportunity are values that are difficult to claim as belonging to only one party - they belong to all of us, Democrat, Republican, Unaffiliated. Defining Democrats as having these values is critical to having our views listened to and having credibility.
A special letter to every angry Democrat in this country
Two counties in rural Georgia have just sent a message, and they’ve sent it to you. There’s nowhere redder than Oglethorpe and Gilmer Counties, no people more surrounded by MAGA hats and giant Trump flags and endless personal harassment .. no Democrats more angry and fed up. And now they’ve taken a stand. They’ve said enough! They’ve adopted the Democratic Creed officially, and with it they’ve sent a message
INSPIRE
“Inspire” is the word we’re missing. It’s the emotion we’re missing, as Democrats, as Americans who care about guiding this nation towards a future as a truly just society. If we’re not inspired towards our ultimate goal, if we don’t see it clearly, how will we get there?
MAGA inspires. Trump inspires. They inspire a sense of emotional identity, of enduring passion, something far deeper and far stronger than politics. Why don’t we inspire? Forget the next election campaign and the latest issue, why doesn’t the Democratic Party itself inspire? Why doesn’t who we are as a party cause Democrats to stand up with pride all over this country, sweeping independents and unaffiliated with them?
words, words, words
“… 80% of people in this country who share the ideals of our founding, who share the idea that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness .. at least 80% of this country shares the same basic values that we do.”
Quick, who said that?
Abraham Lincoln 2. Barack Obama 3. Joe Biden
or 4. Vivek Ramaswamy
Yes! Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump wannabe did. He said it just the other day, and you shouldn’t be surprised. It’s what’s been going on for decades .. decades .. right in front of our noses, the theft of language. We have, in fact, all but helped them do it.
That quote is accurate, of course, he just mixed up the parties. But to his listeners, he didn’t get it wrong at all, he hit the nail on the head. Why? Because it sounded good. It made them feel good. And that’s what happens when messaging has no purpose beyond gaining power.
Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity are what we stand for as Democrats, what we all feel is in our hearts. But we have never written it down. We have never stood up and declared it in simple, unequivocal English that everyone can understand. And we have never gone on to declare it, over and over again, until every American in this nation has started to believe it. That’s the problem. Our sensing it is not enough. That so many of us assume it isn’t, either. These things, these ideas, have to be made public, and they have to dominate.
our moment
We are standing at a true moment in American history, a fork in the road that will decide our future as a nation. This fork isn’t about Donald Trump, and it isn’t about the next election. It’s about something much, much deeper. For the first time ever as a nation, we are actually facing up to the fundamental principal American democracy: are all people created equal? Do all of us .. everywhere .. have the same right to equal Freedom, equal Justice, and equal Opportunity? That is what’s really going on.
We have nibbled at the concept of equality for nearly 250 years. Back in 1776, of course, we had virtually none. Wealthy white males didn’t just dominate society, it was considered normal. Women didn’t count at all. Blacks and Native Americans were considered subhuman. Being born gay was considered an aberration worthy of either prison or death, and Catholics were considered spawn of the Devil.
An ohio story
In December, 2021, the Huron County Democratic Party .. a rural county in northern Ohio .. gathered for their annual holiday party and meeting. During the event, several persons spoke. The last person, the chairwoman announced, would speak about a book, Democrats 101, by J. M. Purvis. What follows are the words that Tim used:
“In 1776, American patriots gathered in taverns to hear the reading of “Common Sense” by Thomas Paine. “Common Sense” was, and still is, the most widely circulated publication in American history. It laid down all the facts and reasoning for overthrowing the British monarchy and gaining independence and self rule.
Like the patriots in 1776, we are gathered here tonight at a time of peril. Where their fight was to overthrow monarchy, ours is to save democracy. And the way we do that is by getting more people to identify as Democrats, and more to vote Democratic. And to do that we must state our identity. What is a Democrat? What do we all agree with?
politics versus identity
Politics is how you make things happen.
Politics is about getting people elected, the endless campaign work, the messaging and meetings and rounding up volunteers and getting out the vote. And money. Politics is about endless amounts of money, and all the problems that brings.
Politics is also the art of governing. It’s about the mechanics of passing legislation, deciding on which issues to take on, fighting over policy and fending off (or giving into) the endless interest groups that overrun everything. Above all, politics is about compromise. Be it be it a local campaign for city council or passing a budget in the House of Representatives, politics is very, very much the art of the possible. It’s not about perfect, or even desirable, it’s about possible.
Identity is something else entirely. It’s permanent. It’s who we are. It’s why we got into this in the first place. Identity is our core values, the unchanging truth that makes us Democrats. Unchanging, and universal. As true twenty years from now as it is today. As true for all of us as it is for any of us. It means we are Democrats first and foremost, no matter who we are or where we live, or what else we believe.
We need both.
Anger and frustration … and hope
I’m here because of anger, and frustration .. because of yours, and mine, an awful lot of people all across this country. Under everything else, you hear the same thing: an overwhelming sense that something’s wrong, that we’re adrift as a party, adrift as a nation. One party official put it this way: we’re like a ship that’s lost its mooring.
There is a way out of this mess. Yes! Absolutely. The way out of this mess is you … the county leaders … and it starts with understanding what’s really going on.
This country .. our country .. is in the early stages of a slow-motion social, cultural, and economic revolution.
evil is evil
When are Democrats going to stop reacting? When do we stop defending? Yes, Florida Republicans used language in a bill that says somehow, some part of slavery might have benefitted slaves. Yes, it’s sneaky. Yes, it’s despicable.
Our response? To lament the action. To send the vice President down to show outrage. That, is defending.
Our response should be a powerful, public statement of just how evil slavery was. A once and for all, clear and unequivocal statement of just how destructive the institution was, for the slaves above all, but also for the country .. morally, in blood, in destroyed lives, in the endless racism we are still paying for today. Slavery was evil. Period.
The urge
America was born into an ideal: that all people were created equal. That ideal was immediately submerged in a world that was very unequal. In 1776, most injustice wasn’t even considered injustice, just the way of things. But that founding ideal of innate equality persisted. It endured, and it spread, because it represented a very human urge to seek Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity, the same urge that had caused so many of those early Americans to come in the first place.
This idea of the innate equality of people spread rapidly among the common people during the Revolution. Few of us have even heard about this, just how many people began to look at the lofty Enlightenment sentiments being voiced by the elite white men leading the revolution, and began wondering “why not me, too?”
FILLINg a hole
The Supreme Court has spoken, and it’s going to go on speaking for a long time. But what is it really saying? That decision on gay rights isn’t really about gay rights, and the decision on affirmative action isn’t really about race. Deep down, these decisions … all of them, including Dobbs and those endless ones yet to come … are really a statement about a giant hole in this country, a spiritual hole: the lack of commonly accepted, fundamental American values. We don’t have those values written down anywhere, the basic beliefs that say who we are.
America has never had such a statement of values. Ever. For the first two hundred plus years, it didn’t matter. Nobody agreed on national values, so basically there weren’t any. Racism and injustice were ingrained in society. They were accepted. As a result, social progress was tough. It was bought very, very slowly, one agonizing issue at a time.
the real meaning of the 4th of july (part 2)
This nation was founded on change. People were uprooted from the very roots of their existence to come here. Most people gave up everything and everyone they had known, then were forced to invent a completely new way of life in a virtually unknown world. Even native Americans were forced by events into adapting to endless change.
That process of change has been endless throughout our history, inventing new ways of doing things, and fighting through endless obstacles to do it. Only historians can properly mark all the turning points, but certain eras stand out. There are certain periods of time that stand out, when national events and circumstances led to major changes in our very fabric as a society.
We have a story
We have a story that begins with with FDR, a mythical figure who was actually a very real human being, a man crippled in the prime of his life, yet who found the courage to abandon the precepts of his wealthy upbringing and work for the common good. His story is our story as Democrats: leading this nation out of a national catastrophe, then through a World War, and in the process creating the vision of a government that works for the people. That story that led to Social Security and workers rights and an end to child labor, then on to Medicaid and Medicare and voting rights and every other bit of social progress inspired by his vision. FDR’s story is indeed our story, even today, the endless struggle to keep that vision of a government of and for the people alive, and to make it work. FDR did nothing less than found our party and lay the emotional foundations for the idea of a truly just society.
The Real Meaning of the Fourth of July - Part 1
We own values. Our core beliefs are who we are, and they’re powerful. Yet, we Democrats never seem to recognize it, we never seem to look deeper. We cling to policies, and purity tests, and squabbling. We divide ourselves endlessly. We take apparent victory and turn it into defeat, and we do it over and over again. And each time we scratch our heads and ask “why?”
The Republicans understand we own values, that’s why they have spend so much time and money demonizing us. It’s why they’ve had a giant organization working in the background for decades, just to destroy our identity. They fear our values because they’re American values, because they stand for this country’s future, because deep down most Americans want to believe in them.
But these core values are never going to really be seen as our values … as our identity … until we stand up and declare them, till we own them. And there’s no better example than the Fourth of July.
Memorial day a time to reflect
Memorial Day is a time to reflect, not just about those that have died, but about why.
The original Memorial Day was born out of a terrible inferno that was fought to resolve that other terrible inferno: slavery. Slavery died, but of course it was replaced with Jim Crow, which yielded yet another national struggle, the Civil Rights Movement.
All of this, every bit of every struggle back through our entire history has been part of America’s endless quest to match the ideals of the Declaration of Independence with the realities of our lives.
We sit at a fork in the road here in America, a moment as historic as 1860. One path leads forward toward a just society, a time when all Americans share equally in Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity. The other path leads off to division, chaos, and pain.