Time to 'Man Up' or Fold

How We Got Here

Liberals like me—a trained Social Psychologist,  President Obama—the whitest and safest black man in America and a very smart and accomplished guy, and Hillary Clinton—a woman too smart and arrogant for her own good, have repeatedly underestimated the power of hate, fear, and willful ignorance for a significant minority of the electorate. A fat, lazy, ignorant, angry disaffected and racist minority made Trump’s electoral college ‘win’ possible. Donald Trump defeated a flawed, arrogant, out of touch Democrat who, like Michael Dukakis versus George H. Bush (1988), and John Kerry and Al Gore versus George “W” Bush (2000 and 2004) before her, assumed the American people would make a rational, informed choice for President in 2016.

We can still stop this madness, but not with intellectual or moral arguments, 21-point platforms, reaching out to idiots, moving to ‘the Center’, playing it safe or being civil. This is a War Republicans have been fighting and winning for decades. We have been bringing intellect, knowledge, and moral appeals to a knife fight with evil, well-funded, morally bankrupt monsters who see power and winning as the only thing that matters, effectively appealing to the basest aspects of human nature.

Trump is a corrupt malignant narcissist and demagogue. His presidency is unprecedented. He represents a threat to our Nation that cannot be overestimated. He is not a stable genius. He is not a populist. He is not a White Savior who can Make America White Again. He is not a successful businessman or self-made man. Trump is a fraud, a con artist, a mental and emotional cripple.

Trump has unmasked the face of the Filthy Rich and Corporate America—concerned only with satisfying their rapacious greed and gaining and keeping political power at any and all costs. They have: (1) created a fake Culture War with values they personally mock, to appeal to White Evangelical ‘Christians’; (2) used hate and fear to demonize “the other” to appeal to bigots; (3) destroyed labor unions that defend workers; and (4) deliberately created a ‘winner take all’ economy to increase the insecurity of low-education working people—the very people they have exploited for profits and their gain. They have demonized programs for the common good like the Affordable Care Act, Social Security and Medicare as socialism, and demonized out groups, faceless ‘elites’ and bureaucrats to focus appropriate rage away from themselves. Trump has revealed the moral bankruptcy of the Filthy Rich and Corporate America. As a demagogue, he has effectively exploited and continues to exploit his hateful, fearful, and willfully ignorant authoritarian core minority base.

While the Democratic National Committee and Democratic operatives were obsessed with winning presidential elections and keeping abortion legal, for decades, the Republicans have been executing a deliberate plan: systematically buying Governor seats and State Houses on the cheap, creating gerrymandered districts so even as they lose the popular vote in a State, they win most of the seats in the House of Representatives and State House majorities.

The culmination of all of this is Donald Trump, a dangerous mental and emotional cripple, in the White House, and a majority in Congress to enact a Republican Tax Reform fraud in 2017, passed with no Democratic support, and the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, with just one Democratic vote.

How Do We Fix This?

I used the term man up deliberately in the title for the benefit of women. We are way past political correctness or doctrinaire feminism. We are in a war for the very survival of an America that was, until the ‘election’ of this reactionary demagogue, well on its way to an inclusive, diverse, more just and equitable America, no longer dominated by the Filthy Rich, Corporations and White Men. To deal with this clear and present danger, we will have to abandon the luxury of dissension and infighting. We are no longer men or women, White or People of Color, White Collar professional or Blue-Collar worker, Hillary or Bernie supporter, or political socialists, liberals, progressives, moderates, or centrists. We are Democrats. Not the weak, fragmented, easily distracted, quarrelsome  Present-Day Democrats. We must become New Warrior Democrats; unified freedom fighters in The Resistance to defeat the darkness, madness, and evil that has arisen.

So, what do we do? We need to convince Democrats and Independents who occasionally vote—when it’s a Presidential election and they “like” and/or have an ethnic affinity for the Democrat, or to support some specific issue, or if it is convenient or they don’t forget—that their lives and the future of the Republic depends on them registering and voting. In every election, at every level of government—Federal, State, and Local—starting with the midterms. We need to convince so-called Independent and Disaffected Voters that the popular sentiment that both parties are the same is wrong. There are profound differences between the Democratic and Republican Parties. Republicans are the lackeys of the Filthy Rich and Corporations. They are the Party of: exploiting hate, fear, and willful ignorance; wealth and income inequity; Drill Baby Drill; Climate Change and other Science denial; angry White Men; racism, xenophobia and homophobia; selective ‘Christianity’ and religious intolerance; Country Clubs, gated communities, private schools, White Male Privilege and exclusion; and government for the privileged few. Only the Democratic Party supports diversity, inclusion, progressive taxation, secular humanism and religious tolerance, science, reason, public education, and government for the many and the common good.

If we cannot convince poor people, working people, people of color, women, LGBTQ people, Hispanics, Students, immigrant citizens and second and third generation hyphenated Americans, Independents and Disaffected Voters to register and vote for Democrats like, forgive the expression, Republicans do for their Party, we deserve to fail to regain power, and the America we cherish deserves to die.

I believe the stakes are this high. Hitler could have been stopped if the German people had woken up and realized the threat he posed, instead of dismissing him and his Brown Shirts minority. The breach Trump has exploited and inflamed may already be so great that only a second Civil War or the voluntary secession of the reddest States can close it. But Trump and his Republican enablers must be stopped now. How and when we deal with his irreconcilable Trump Cult lunatic minority core base—the malignant cancer on the body politic he has brought into the light—can be addressed after Trump is dealt with. A Democratic majority in the Congress should act to reestablish the Rule of Law and remove Trump from office in disgrace for his many high crimes and misdemeanors in 2019. Failing that, we must neutralize him and his administration until the 2020 presidential election when We the People can reject and defeat him through the ballot box.