Don’t cede American identity to MAGA.
In the past few months of this administration, we’ve watched our institutions compromised and dismantled, our fellow residents abducted for being on the “wrong” side of an imaginary line, the programs relied on as the difference between life and death at home and abroad torn apart. They want the United States of America broken down and remade in their image, where those who don’t fit that image do not belong.
Don’t let them.
I’m American. The United States of America is where I am from, where I was born, where I live and work. Where I intend to stay. Sure, it’s an Evil Empire, built on white supremacy and slavery and indigenous genocide, etc. But it’s my home. To me and 360 million others.
The Orange Thing and his MAGA ilk don’t get to decide who does and does not count as “American”. Their racism, xenophobia, and all-around sadistic cruelty does not define us.
I said this already seven years ago, when I declared that “this is not who we are”. And I stand by it. But, yikes, given the current situation, it’s rather bittersweet now.
That was during the first term, attained through some electoral college fuckery despite popular vote loss. The will of the people prevailed in 2020 and the Orange Thing was out. Then he came back, with the popular vote win this time.
If this is not who we are, so many sure did choose it. We protest what’s happening as a defense of democracy, but, let’s be real here, a free and fair election got us here. It was less informed voters who carried him right back into the White House, probably going on name recognition and having gotten stuck listening to Fox News while in a waiting room. People we’ve been encouraging to cast their ballot, to make their voice heard, only for them to see what their vote has wrought. So why should they bother? How can democracy survive that, when our fellow voters are either actively choosing fascism or don’t even know what that word means and just wanted cheaper eggs or, God help us, believed his claims of being anti-war?
Maybe there’s some hope in a widespread “oh shit, we fucked up” among the electorate, that subsequent elections this year have shown a sharp turn away from the Orange Thing and his right wing goons. If it holds. If established officials don’t kneecap it with “opposition” candidates who don’t actually inspire anyone or promise any real positive change or correction to course while inhibiting those who do. Zohran Mamdani just demolished Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral primary, so that’s delicious and promising. But even many elected officials in his same party who should be getting behind him have instead hesitated or outright blasted him with the exact racist and Islamophobic garbage you get from the Orange Thing and his MAGA dipshits. So maybe that’s who they are.
Maybe this is the true test of who we are. The Orange Thing has the Republican Party wrapped around his finger, and, it seems, plenty of Democrats haven’t shown to be much better or at all potent at countering it other than measly words wedged in a donation request text message. So regardless of how informed the voters may be, how informative the mainstream news, sometimes these are just the choices we’re stuck with: a Republican candidate whose mouth spends the better part of the day somewhere below the Orange Thing’s waist, or a Democrat who raises their fist in defiance while breathlessly assuring voters of agreement with the Republican candidate’s bigotries. Democrats like that got the nomination in the first place after dumping a truckload of money into the primary to wipe out any challengers, presenting themselves as the only sensible candidate as others are frozen out from getting their messages out there. This failed spectacularly for Andrew Cuomo. It must fail for all others like him. That is our test.
Our test before came in the 2018 midterms, which saw a major change in the balance of power but disappointing failures to do so in other areas, where voters should have known better given what was happening. It may be similar next year.
So who are we, that we elected these current leaders and all those before who set the stage for where we are now? They put ridiculous idiots on the Supreme Court, who then overturn Roe v Wade among a load of other bullshit decisions, all of which is shown to be wildly unpopular. Yet those who made it happen keep winning elections.
I guess I don’t have an answer for that, nothing beyond again pointing out we’re a big diverse country beyond the Orange Thing’s favored white conservatives. The people too many think of when they think of a “typical” American, erasing all the rest of us.
Maybe I just have more of what we aren’t. Our national identity is not defined by the White House occupant, whoever it is at any given time. Hell, maybe, for all the words spilled above, we aren’t our election results. We’re a few hundred million people who call these states and territories home. Who want to be seen and counted as part of this place.
United by the Constitution.
Emboldened by the Declaration of Independence.
We enter the 250th year under the greatest threat ever from within, with the desperate hope that this nation of the people, by the people, for the people, won’t soon perish from the earth.
