The Pursuit of Happiness

There is an impressive array of anti-Trump protests happening across the United States. Indivisible communities have sprung from the withered loins of the Clinton campaign, town hall meetings with important right-wing ding-a-lings bristle with feeling, phone lines choke at end-point terminals, and mailbags stuffed with Ides of March advice and counsel overwhelm the resolve and resources of post offices everywhere. Hot damn, The People are mad and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

In practical terms, this means that a 20 year-old intern in Tommy Cotton’s office is told to circular file letters or phone calls from ZIP Code 72632 because they’re probably from a homo, a Libtard, or a Politically Correct Snowflake. You can take it personally if you want to, but the same thing happens to calls and letters from the People’s Republics of Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, Madison, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and, etc. – the places where the majority of American voters live. The only calls and letters that matter to Republican legislators are from rural areas, and from exurban zip codes ringing major cities. They’ll take those, along with love notes and checks from Halliburton and Con Agra, because that’s how they stay in office.

Protests are a Constitutional right, an essential civic duty, and one that we’re obligated to perform irrespective of outcome. Good for us if we’ve done our job. Too bad for us that our protests – and our votes – don’t matter because of gerrymandered political districts, and the primacy of the Electoral College. We can’t kid ourselves into believing that we have a majority rules government or country anymore.

The only road out of the wilderness of political disenfranchisement is to build coalitions and alliances with people and organizations outside the safety of what we know and whom we know. Slim majorities must become convincing majorities. The first place to start is with the established political parties: join, reform, support, and become a leader within them. Take the political and moral energy that drives your present sense of urgency about national issues, and turn it toward local matters.       Sometimes you have to cross a river to make a real difference.