PROTESTING IS NOT ENOUGH

The Tea Party, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News turned the Republican Party of Eisenhower into one built entirely on negativity. If President Obama or any Democrat had walked on water their headline would have been “Look he can’t even swim”. Now, instead of focusing on trying to solve real problems like unaffordable healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, Wall street fraud, and growing income inequality, they are focused on lowering taxes on the rich, attacking women, family planning, human rights, science, diplomacy, and global warming. They know only nihilism. They know only how to tear down not how to build nor how to govern.

America’s problems grow worse by the day. The money and good will needed to solve them is being squandered and given away to the rich in the same way it was under George Bush. As Yogi Berra would say: “It’s Déjà vu all over again.”

We know that blaming and bullying isn’t governing. We know that raiding the public treasury and public environmental resources for private gain is wrong. We need to continue to resist their efforts to undermine American’s foundational values of fairness, truth and equality. But we must do more than resist the wonton destruction of our democratic heritage and basic institutions like voting rights, public education and honest reporting. We must turn the destroyers out of office in 2018.

It was the hard work of millions of ordinary Americans not the wasteful speculation of a few that made America the envy of every other country in the world. It was the millions of middle class homeowners not the mansions of the wealthy that made America what it was before greed and lying came to be so admired by those now in power.

So, stand tall as one who believes work should be rewarded, public schools and institutions should be strengthened not destroyed, taxes should be proportioned fairly. Support equality regardless of gender, color or status. Support honesty in government and business. Restore sanity and science.

Do more than protest inequality and unfairness. Get to work in every way you can to turn out of office in 2018 those who are taking America down.

Jerry Scribner
August 2017