The Libertarian Democrat–A letter to Dems
Hey nice job on blowing the election. Look what a mess you’ve gotten us into. Hillary Clinton. Wow. “Her turn” was “your turn”, wasn’t it. Buy hey, the disaster is that both political parties have collapsed, right? Right.
In Kentucky you can google Cassius Marcellus Clay, an abolitionist from down by Lexington, and friend of Lincoln’s, who said you need to change political parties every so often because they usually lose their way. So as a life-long republican, while still figuring government can create huge problems and tends to, I am abandoning these cats and wondering what you all have got. And, at no expense to you, I would like to offer some ideas on how to get decency, your long suit, back into American Leadership. Most of us grew up with moms and dads who would tell you, “you’re a democrat”. They all were.
Learning From Their Successes
It would help if you got a few messages. First of all, consider what I call “The Country Music Rule”: Country music will always be popular because most people are real simple, and they like simple melodies and lyrics they can sing the wrong words to. Though your heart may be in the right place, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. With minimal effort, you can go right over a majority of the people’s heads, the ones currently painting the map so red. And when you go so far out of your way to stand up for every little idiosyncrasy of your “challenged” compatriots, you lose people on the “ignorant right”. It’s a tree you’ll have to find a way to climb down out of.
Trumpers, for the most part, are people who look effectively after their own and expect others to. That’s a pretty simple concept, the kind they like. Many think 25 million Mexicans was enough. Why do you want them to forgive muslims who brought them 9/11 and forever removed freedom from their lives. Climate change? All they see is weather. The rest is just… over their heads.
So you might want to keep things simple, and for now as much as possible cool it on blind support for all the freaks of society. Support them of course, as quietly as possible.
The Barak Obama Effect
The Trumpers out here in Trumpville did not get much from Obama, who carefully stood for nothing and stood up for nobody in his efforts to slide a cool middle. But something he said early on about “finally being proud to be an American”, they took it to mean he “hates America”. They never got over it, and Hillary offered nothing inspirational to them, but a massively tacit sense of a glass ceiling. So you might just want to rally ’round the flag boys. Not sure how, but add it somehow to the schtick.
This should not be difficult.
“Issues of Public Health”
Several “hot button” issues could be exploited properly to bring both relief to people of challenge and oppression and replenish your reputation as being for the common man. Rather than making a bunch of laws which have made so many of your party’s foes so angry, do the pragmatic and efficient thing, which is to use existing institutions like The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), and churches and charitable organizations, and that very stout medical system we’ve built, to deliver education and advice and treatment for these issues, rather than involve government. This gets you off the hook for wanting to push new laws on a public that needs and wants less of them. So for gun laws, just don’t. Explore how you can reduce deaths from a public health standpoint. LGBT issues and women’s heath concerns, people all know where you stand on them, so don’t mention laws and threats. The decent people still outnumber the dogs out there. Just shut up about it, and stick your tongue in your cheek and say, “It’s a public Health issue.”
Think Bernie, Think Millennials
Your future is the face of the millennials. Our parents generation, that “World War Two” generation, they were sexist, bigoted, racist, and largely uneducated. Their parents generation was even worse. The Baby Boom was better, but the millennials are the most progressive yet, and they will naturally gravitate to your party. These issues matter to them. The environment, Diversity. Debt. The influence of Big Money, and Wall Street. Bernie spoke gospel, so I’d look to him as your standard bearer. There is magic is doing what millennials want you to do, and the Republicans have nothing to offer them.
End the War on Drugs
You need a “revolutionary” concept to establish your place as an improver of actual lives, and this is America’s dirty little secret. Big Red sez the world is way ready. Abundant footage exists for the indictment of this ghastly prohibition as the subsidiary of the military industrial complex it is. Criminalizing the pursuit of happiness has been, of course, a great crime perpetrated on the people of this country, and has been unevenly prosecuted on people of color and lower socio-economic status, worsening their troubles, which have come back to haunt us in so many ways.
Befriend LEAP (Once: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; Now: Law Enforcement Action Partnership), the voice of reason on the matter, composed of former drug war warriors who have turned against the effort. It is they who were instrumental in the marijuana reform laws in Colorado and elsewhere, and I have included their ten commandments (“LEAP’s Statement of Principles”) on the site here. But you cannot count the social ills resulting from these 47 years of prohibition. The sturdy underworld. The ruination of black enclaves through mass incarceration. The revolving door between prison and the inner cities mingling those two cultures. The hearts broken and lives shattered. The out of control police force. Destruction of Mexico and so many other Central and South American neighbors. And not to mention the assault on the constitution. I know trial lawyers are a strong lobby for you and want the prohibition to continue but you must castigate them. They’re “old party”.
Got a Gimmick for You
You need a gimmick. How about getting a rich sponsor to buy several thousand books about the constitution, like Linda Monk’s book which I read three times: “The Words We Live By: Your Annotated Guide to The Constitution”. And send it out to a bunch of households, telling people these Trump folks are assaulting their lifeblood as a country (which they are), and say you just want to make sure people know the document, where every word in it came from, and that our hope here is that government of the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth, or something like that. (Full disclosure, I do not know Linda Monk.)
Your attention span is short, and these are but a few ideas. But I have a slogan for you: In a few years you’ll be saying, “Lock HIM up, and Let’s Make America Great Again!”
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