A few folks have asked me to tone down my blog posts, suggesting I be more docile or polite. Let me just say, no, I won’t do that. Please allow me to explain.
Yes, back in 2016, before the first Trump Administration, Michelle Obama advised, “When they go low, we go high.” That didn’t work. MAGA has bitten every hand offered to them and in the past 8 years they have dived lower than we ever imagined possible.
We need to stop them. That means fighting back. And, I can tell you, right now that’s a real problem for freedom-loving Americans. Too many of our champions are conflicted, or just plain in denial, and keep pretending like the old decorum still exists. It doesn’t. Right now, we need champions to fight an onslaught of cruel chaos from free-wheeling billionaires who are on the verge of taking everything from us.
I am a leader who will not cower and quail. I tell it like it REALLY is.
And, look just how much Idaho Republicans are to mistreat and endanger the lives of regular people like you and me. Here are the recent priorities:
- Slash Medicaid–that’s healthcare for poor kids (if their poor parents are too old for Idaho’s famous empathy).
- Give your tax dollars to private and religious schools–any legislator who claims this isn’t a public schools cut is exactly the kind of shameless liar that can go places in today’s BIG MAGA government.
- Criminalize Abortion: it’s healthcare, period. It’s healthcare that also revolutionized a woman’s chances at having meaningful lives, giving us new paths toward freedom from poverty. Don’t like women’s rights? Then you don’t like women. And if it’s your religion that advises you to treat women like chattel, that’s why I don’t want my tax dollars paying for your cruel religious school.
- Let Brad Little veto ballot initiatives–when all of the power is in the Executive, you have the kind of government that Italy’s Benito Mussolini is credited for starting. He called it fascism. A youngish Adolf Hitler once sent Benito a fan letter about how great he thought fascism was. Brad already abuses the power he has: he and his MAGA overlords don’t need more.
And Let me say this loud and clear to everyone: I told you so!
Too many of our leaders were cordial; they fretted over how to get along with our MAGA neighbors; and talked about the niceties of tradition, compromise, and decorum when we should have been fighting tooth and nail. If you don’t stand up to bullies, they keep bullying.
So, no. Now is not the time to be nice.
The examples of the folly of being nice to this bunch are too many to list. But I think once Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade it was a clear sign that, in politics (or Monopoly or Poker or … name the game), cheating with impunity is the side that wins. Everytime. Last year, SCOTUS declared that the convicted felon who is right now installing an army of thieves, miscreants, and dilettantes to lead our country can go ahead and commit crimes (aka, cheat all he wants) with impunity.
Nice hasn’t worked. Nice won’t work.
I will likely get much louder and more vigilant as we all see with our own eyes the destruction that is happening in Idaho and in this country. As I watch the marginalized get trampled, the LGBTQIA+ community attacked, women told that it’s “your body, my choice” all the while a small handful of rich men take over this country as an oligarchy and do Nazi salutes on national television. Yeah, count me out of being nice. Our society is falling apart, so now is not the time for being docile and nice. The most dignified and loving action right now is to speak the truth.
Instead, I commit to the following:
- I will loudly support the LGBTQIA+ community
- I will show up for people of color when they are being attacked
- I WILL PROTECT WOMEN
- I will fight for kids to get a chance to be healthy, educated, and free.
- I will oppose attempts by the Idaho GOP and federal government–and the MAGA faction that put them in power–to further infringe on the rights of all of us citizens.
Pay attention to this moment in our history and think hard about what is happening. I have.The trendline is clear and if things keep going the way they seem to be going, soon we may all be committing crimes just by speaking our minds–whether we are nice about it or not.