'We don't agonize, we organize.'
It’s clear that Trump-worship serves some sort of antisocial spiritual void in middle and working class, rural red state America. He fills a need in the hearts and minds of the Mountain Dew crew that falls somewhere between Dale Earnhardt and Jesus.
I drove from the New York/Pennsylvania border through the Lehigh Valley on through to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia over the last two days and lost count of how many ‘Trump Won’ and ‘Trump 2024’ flags were festooned across lawns, tacked to mailboxes and flown from single story ranch house rooftops and old rustic barns.
There were also far too many - for my comfort - signs for Trump’s surrogates and crackpot proteges like Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano. Men with no real instinct for leadership but an aptitude for pledging fealty to a demagogue and helping folks walk lockstep into voting against their own self-interest by appropriating the iconography of the aggrieved.
John Fetterman is as Pennsylvanian as it comes; spending most of his adult life being of service to his community and trying to better the lives of those around him. Dr. Oz is a carpet-bagging-TV-diet-pill-hawking shill for whoever will give him his next oversize paycheck.
Oz has used his vast fortune and those of his billionaire backers to pollute the Pennsylvania landscape with his ugly and ubiquitous lawn signs. This may be in part to launch a well-funded push back against election results and rallying of the troops when he loses this election, as he most certainly will if voters stay true to their ideals and don’t fall for the carnival barkers’ toady.
‘How could Dr. Oz lose, I’ve seen his signs everywhere’ will be the cries of the wanna-be soldiers assembling in the gun store parking lots to protest this latest affront to ‘freedom’ and further line the pockets of Trump and the MAGA grifters who fundraise ceaselessly off the eternally aggrieved and perpetually hoodwinked.
There’s a fervor to this rhetoric that feels like a caustic elixir, an oily mix of extremism, antisemitism and plain old rural white American resentment of the other, most notably Black, Latino and Asian-American citizens.
Anyone who falls under the umbrella of progressive politics and equality is also a target, as we seen the many GOP candidates running on anti-LGBTQ rights platforms. They’ve sunk so low that transgender students are often singled out and targeted for retribution by local Republican politicians and school districts.
It’s not an accident that Lindsey Graham pulled a political stunt that would have made Lee Atwater cringe, with a bewildered and feckless Herschel Walker sitting right next to him, seemingly bewildered and bemused.
It’s also worth noting that Lindsey’s embarrassing and shameful stunt came a day after Justice Thomas gave him legal cover to continue to dodge a subpoena from the state of Georgia over his interference in the 2020 elections on behalf of Donald Trump.
The shamelessness married to extremism and no concern for the other party is what defines this moment - as I write this we have learned that the attacker who broke into Speaker Pelosi’s home last night and assaulted her husband was chanting ‘Where’s Nancy…?’ a detail that should chill the hearts of any true patriots who care to live in a civilized society.
The army of the ignorant has been activated - and with the advent of Twitter’s new chapter under Elon Musk - will bring dangerous and dark times if we are not all vigilant and uncowed. Democracy will prevail.
‘We don’t agonize, we organize’ as Speaker Pelosi herself says to motivate and encourage the many folks in the U.S. Capitol and beyond, including myself, who look to her for leadership. She and her family are targets because of her effectiveness.
Pelosi’s leadership and heroism were on full display in the recently released Jan 6th videos where she reached across the aisle to check in with VP Pence - while taking actions to secure the continuance of government in the face of an unprecedented and violent attack. And I cannot help but think that pushback on the world stage of the godhead Trump might have fueled the rancor and violence that motivated this latest attack.
Many of the MAGA folks are engaged in a co-dependent dance while Trump’s narcissism continues to call the tune. They’ve proven capable of committing a lot of evil acts to keep the big guy safe from getting the feels. What are the MAGA rallies themselves if not public masturbatory sessions in tribute to Trump’s damaged and adolescent ego?
An attack that was fomented and spurred on by a cabal of villains trying to protect and cover for a criminal President who didn’t want to leave office - so he could insulate himself from the crimes he had committed while being there. There is no bigger or more effective criminal organization operating the United States at this very moment than MAGA and its CEO, Donald J. Trump.
I stopped at the Gettysburg National Military Park yesterday and looked across the fields that nearly 50,000 Americans fought and died on over a three day battle that proved to be the bloodiest in American history.
I woke up in one of the southern states that lost that battle and it looked very much like the northern state I had slept in the night before. Same fall colors on the trees, same big pickup trucks everywhere, same Trump lawn signs.
Nothing had changed but my proximity to the Mason-Dixon line. That line no longer exists - we’ve got to recognize the cultural fires being fanned by reactionary forces have reached into most of the American landscape. And the folks fanning those flames would rather burn it all down than be held accountable for their crimes.
The history and loss created from the Civil War are supposed to serve as a reminder to future generations not to make the same mistakes. Let the ghosts of history whisper in our ears and guide us toward our better angels.
To quote the great Abraham Lincoln himself, who led this nation so gallantly and ultimately morally through such dark and troubled times, “A house divided against itself cannot stand”.
Lincoln’s point being he didn’t think the division would last, that we would morph into one thing or the other because you cannot remain neutral in the moral battles of one’s time.
The question for all of us now is - who do we want to become?
A nation that devolves into snarky political quips on media platforms controlled by billionaire narcissists to aid other billionaires and help despots destroy us in the name of ‘free speech’ - or finally admit we have sunk to a bottom, reached an inflection point from which we will someday soon recover, and point our ship back towards the righteous seas so many of us want to sail on together.
In an America that protects, honors and includes all of us seeking to live meaningful, impactful lives where diversity is viewed as an asset rather than something to fear. We can all participate in the battle to save the soul of this nation. Volunteer, vote and use your voice - as Speaker Pelosi herself says so well, ‘We don’t agonize, we organize.’
Vote Blue November 8th. Love always wins.