The following is an open letter to my Republican friends and family.
Today, you are bound to feel a bit shocked and upset. For years, you’ve been watching Fox News (or listening to talk radio) and they have been telling you day after day that the incumbent President is incompetent and corrupt, that this is plain for all to see, and that the electorate is about to turn en masse to your candidate to restore American greatness. I want you to seriously consider the possibility that your news sources weren’t just woefully wrong about the electoral numbers at hand here; they are wrong through-and-through, tip to toes, balls to bone.
The President isn’t a secret Manchurian/Kenyan anti-imperialist crypto-Muslim plant sent to destroy America from within. He didn’t apologize to the world for being American; he didn’t foul up the defense of our embassies and consulates out of empathy with the terrorists; he didn’t bail out Wall Street and Woodward Avenue because it was the Communist thing to do. He didn’t forge his long-form birth certificate to discredit Donald Trump, and he didn’t fake Bin Laden’s death in consultation with Al Qaeda and the United Nations. He also didn’t say “you didn’t build that” with reference to your small business and he certainly didn’t claim that if his campaign kept talking about the economy, they would lose.
You are being deceived.
Systematically, day-in, day-out, people are paid handsomely to keep you drenched with fear and bathing in loathing. Fear of the lesbians next door, fear of the foreigners down the street, fear of the other, fear of the future. Fear that your children won’t grow up to believe and think and act as you do. Fear of the divine retribution that would follow. You’re so soaked in fear that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to be safe and dry.
In the next few days, the mendacious media machine that has been keeping you afraid, predictable, and subservient is going to ask you to dig in and double down. They are going to tell you that the conservatism of the 2012 elections wasn’t stalwart and pure enough, that if you redouble your efforts to roll back taxes, regulations, health-care access, equal rights for women and minorities, and the wall of separation between church and state, then surely you will prevail next time around.
Do not believe them.
Here is what’s going to happen next time around, if you choose that path. The GOP will once again perform most strongly in the oldest and whitest and most religious demographic groups, all of whom will have shrunk significantly. You will lose among women and minority groups even worse next time than you did this time, as the younger generations come to realize that equal rights generate benefits for everyone. You will badly lose the secular vote, which will be larger than ever before. You will, in short, have taken a few more steps down the demographic death spiral. To quote Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) you’re just “not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”
What’s the alternative? Don’t double down on fear and loathing. Turn off the television and go for a walk – maybe you’ll get the chance to greet your lesbian neighbors or wave to those foreigners down the street. Find a news source that doesn’t aim to keep you fearfully awake at night, ringing up toll-free numbers to buy gold and prepper gear. Above all, learn to think for yourself without falling into intellectual black holes. America needs a Republican party filled with pragmatic and critical thinkers who can balance out the Democratic party in fair and open debate, and work with them to face the immense challenges of cutting federal spending while simultaneously raising revenue and making good on our obligations. This was going to be difficult in the best of times, but if you choose dig in now, it may prove impossible.
