This is my contribution to my ongoing series “PROCESSING TRUMP”.
After the election of Barack Obama in 2008, white conservatives felt bereft and neglected and without a voice. Aided and abetted by the Koch brothers and their corporatist front groups, they created the tea party movement.
As much as we all disparage the tea party, those folks showed the fuck up. Their state legislators and Congressional representatives and U.S. Senators knew who they were because they were in their offices and in their phone messages and in their email inboxes making themselves heard.
They. Showed. Up.
Now it’s our turn. Most of us are angry and bewildered and fearful. The proper response at this time is show the fuck up. I don’t care how deplorable your state representative or state senator or member of Congress or U.S. Senator is. They need to hear from you. They need to SEE you. They need to know that you are watching their every move and won’t stay silent when they try to set our country back for decades in terms of the progressive change we’ve helped make happen.
It’s our turn. If we don’t seize this moment and turn it into a meaningful movement like tea partiers did we have only ourselves to blame. Hold EVERY elected official accountable and never stop. They must not be allowed to pass a single regressive law or implement a single regressive policy without a fight. That’s on US. ALL of us.
And while you’re at it, start paying for journalism. Get paid online subscriptions. Get newspapers if you read them. Get magazine subscriptions. Start paying for good journalism because if there is one thing we need more than anything else right now it’s a healthy, vibrant Fourth Estate to keep our democracy alive. You wouldn’t walk into a grocery store, grab a newspaper or magazine, and then walk out without paying. Neither should you expect high quality reporting and investigative journalism to continue with our collective financial support.
The integrity and future of our beloved democracy is dependent on it.
