I want Millennials strongly active in the anti-Trump coalition -- even if that implies the wasting away of our specifically-Boom agenda. We Boomers had our chance to remake America, and what may be our last Boomer President will have ruined our political reputation.
Let's do to Donald Trump what the Tea Party did to Obama, effectively thwarting his progressive agenda and ultimately putting America at risk of being a plutocratic monstrosity.
The Tea Party :
1. Changed votes and defeated legislation
2. Radically slowed federal policy-making
3. Forced Republicans to avoid compromise
4. Shaped national debate about Obama's agenda
5. Paved the way for the Republican takeover in 2018 and the rise of Donald Trump today
These were tangible results that a small part of the American public forced upon America.
What we must not do the vileness that the Tea Party did:
1. Ignore reality and make up falsehood presented as facts
2. Threaten anyone imagined as an enemy
3. Physically assault Congressional staff (including spitting upon them)
4. Shout obscenities and burn people in effigy
5. Target hatred at fellow citizens (especially of color) as well as Congress
....
We can be better than they were. We must be.
With a President who lies practically at will, who has bragged about sexist behavior, and who has smeared people for religion and ethnicity, we have the High Road open to us. Truth will be on our side. We can use statistics, and we can archive quotes of Trump hangers-on.
We have plenty to defend: Inter-ethnic equity and respect for all religions. Gay rights. The right to contraception and abortion. Environmental quality. The right to honest pay for honest work. Equal opportunity. Justice in taxation. Quality schooling. Keeping politics from suppressing science. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. We need not bait the police. (If anything, take photos of people torching cars or smashing windows, and give the photos to the police and local district-attorneys for arrest and prosecution).
Oh, by the way -- stop using derogatory terms about poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South... stop it NOW!
Let's do to Donald Trump what the Tea Party did to Obama, effectively thwarting his progressive agenda and ultimately putting America at risk of being a plutocratic monstrosity.
The Tea Party :
1. Changed votes and defeated legislation
2. Radically slowed federal policy-making
3. Forced Republicans to avoid compromise
4. Shaped national debate about Obama's agenda
5. Paved the way for the Republican takeover in 2018 and the rise of Donald Trump today
These were tangible results that a small part of the American public forced upon America.
What we must not do the vileness that the Tea Party did:
1. Ignore reality and make up falsehood presented as facts
2. Threaten anyone imagined as an enemy
3. Physically assault Congressional staff (including spitting upon them)
4. Shout obscenities and burn people in effigy
5. Target hatred at fellow citizens (especially of color) as well as Congress
....
We can be better than they were. We must be.
With a President who lies practically at will, who has bragged about sexist behavior, and who has smeared people for religion and ethnicity, we have the High Road open to us. Truth will be on our side. We can use statistics, and we can archive quotes of Trump hangers-on.
We have plenty to defend: Inter-ethnic equity and respect for all religions. Gay rights. The right to contraception and abortion. Environmental quality. The right to honest pay for honest work. Equal opportunity. Justice in taxation. Quality schooling. Keeping politics from suppressing science. Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. We need not bait the police. (If anything, take photos of people torching cars or smashing windows, and give the photos to the police and local district-attorneys for arrest and prosecution).
Oh, by the way -- stop using derogatory terms about poor white people in the Mountain and Deep South... stop it NOW!
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.