We the People Stand Ready
I was ruminating deeply on an idea that turned out to be impossible to execute. I liked it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it began to putrefy.
I thought I would write the depraved monster a thank-you note. I wanted to thank him for hyper-energizing my political activism and that of so many on the left. The hilarious irony (to me at least) is that his hideous personality defects, overtly criminal behavior and anti-democratic values had so fired up progressives.
The nauseating tyrant had brought us to the very edge of the abyss and to save our nation and ourselves we had mobilized in a suddenly enlightened state of democratic righteousness. So I was going to thank him for awakening this giant of humanistic goodwill. Makes sense, right? How great is it that the great populist imposter brings down modern movement conservatism? Simply delicious.
While I think that is actually truer than not, the idea of writing a genocidal fascist a thank-you note, no matter how pithy and sardonic, just wasn’t going to work. Too many people have suffered in too many painful and deadly ways because of this madman.
So I went to my Editor in Chief (the Wonderful Wee Wifie) with the conundrum of how can I make this stinker of an idea work, and of course she sent me down a better path. She advised to not mention his name or his crimes in detail and focus on the excitement of what you are seeing out there with the people. People are awakened, people are energized and people are mobilized!
The truth is they are, and it’s not just wishful liberal thinking on my part. All the polls show that the nation is solidly behind the current administration and the Democratic congress and overwhelmingly supports the COVID stimulus package, voting rights legislation, gun safety laws and a bold infrastructure bill. It seems that after 40 years of an endless stream of gargantuan Republican Big Lies, We the People have finally risen up and are declaring pretty emphatically, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!”
And Republicans are justifiably apoplectic in their distess and madly flailing away trying to find even the most tenuous foothold on their historically comfortable but now suddenly slippery slope of greed, white supremacy and capitalist oligarchy. It’s pretty hilarious when they are calling out Big Business for supporting progressive cancel culture like they did regarding moving Major League Baseball’s All Star Game. I guess they forgot whom they took the bribes from to reduce corporate income taxes.
But it’s telling that Big Business is pushing back against the racist big machine. They know where their bread is really buttered and they are correctly reading the tealeaves. We the People…and I mean the 65–75% of the people that are not idiot lemming white racist evangelical robot zombies, have indeed woken up and are indeed in the mood to cancel some stuff.
The stuff they are in the mood to cancel is racism, capitalist greed, bullying, unrestrained free market perversions that hurt people, crony self-dealing, nepotism, misogyny, xenophobia, unaffordable higher education, religious intolerance, gun violence, environmental degradation, income and wealth inequality, anti-Semitism, poverty, unavailable, inadequate and unaffordable healthcare, homophobia and white supremacy, among other Republican espoused and promoted diseases.
And We the People have a vision and an agenda that puts people ahead of profits, celebrates multiculturalism and diversity and allows people to reach their full potential no matter the color of their skin or their race, country of origin or religion. It’s an agenda that champions the value of a free press to democracy and sees government’s primary directives to act as an agent to protect our society’s most vulnerable and as a trustee of a healthy ecosystem that can provide its bounty to future generations.
We the People overwhelmingly support the direction of the present administration and the decades of progressive governance ahead. They have stared into the abyss that Republicans have created and seen with horror what the last four years of chaos, cruelty, corruption and criminality have wrought. They are finished with the indifference and the selfishness, they are done with Republican Big Lies and they are eager to see the Senate dismantle the filibuster, pass legislation that actually helps the people and thus make history in profoundly progressive ways.
So, yeah, that’s a pretty compelling reason to be optimistic and excited about the future. Sure, the failing power structure of privilege will bleat and whine and cajole and threaten as they wilt from the societal poison of their own making, but we have an awful lot to look forward to and will not countenance the conniving any longer.
Because we are awake. And we are empowered. And we stand ready.
(Original art by J.E. Hargate)
