Issue #839 The Choice, Thursday, April 10, 2025
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Who Are We?
Spoiler Alert:
I’m going to repeat something I pointed out two weeks ago, and this is going to be a very short post. What I think bears repeating is that we as a country need to face up to who we really are if we are to have any hope of not sliding over the cliff we’re currently approaching at a rapid pace.
Yes, the protests and pushback are great. The courts are also doing everything they can – except for the Supreme Court. And as I said last week, I couldn’t be more proud of Sen. Corey Booker’s record-breaking speech that he delivered last week opposing Trump and his policies. Same for the massive nationwide anti-oligarchy tour sparked by progressive Reps. Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez.
But in the end, it’s still hard for me to get past the fact that, for whatever reason (ignorance, racism, sexism, misinformation, disinformation, laziness), an incredibly large number of Americans voted for Trump. Twice. And I believe the only reason he lost to President Biden in 2020 was because the pandemic was an immediate threat that was scaring the hell out of Americans and killed more than a half million of us.
But four years later, we forgot all about that.
So what does this say about who we really are as a country right now? About our reality-based potential to actually learn and grow from this as (or maybe ‘if’ is more realistic) we emerge from this? Because if so many people are now saying they had no idea Trump would do what Trump said he was dying to do for eight straight years, then I don’t feel comforted about our future with that level of mass confusion. Not even if we manage to somehow hold elections in 2026 or 2028. Not even if, best case scenario, we manage to win.
It's just not enough to elect a Democratic majority to Congress, nor is it enough to elect a Democratic president. We need to focus on a ground level self-improvement campaign of some sort. Because as long we have this many people who simply will fall for just about any lie they are told because they want to believe it, but then plead confusion when that lie turns out to be …well…a lie? Then we’re basically building a comeback strategy on quicksand.
Anyway, here’s where I repeat what I said before:
From the Council on Foreign Relations:
“Trump flipped six states on his way to winning the Electoral College: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Every other state voted in 2024 as it did in 2020.
“Trump won 77,284,118 votes or 49.8 percent of the votes cast for president. That is the second-highest vote total in U.S. history, trailing only the 81,284,666 votes that Joe Biden won in 2020. Trump won 3,059,799 more popular votes in 2024 than he won in 2020 and 14,299,293 more than he won in 2016. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes won by any presidential candidate in U.S. history, surpassing Barack Obama.”
Folks, our problems are much bigger than Trump, than MAGA, or than a Democratic minority versus majority. Our problem is, in too many ways, us. We have to be better than this. We are better than this, but we have to want that. We have to want to be the best versions of ourselves, and be willing to do the work that requires.
Otherwise, we lose.
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