Enough
An open letter to Decent America
Dear decent Americans,
I met Eddy at a bar. The fact that I was in a bar is unusual. I don’t go to such places, not because I disapprove of them, but because I just don’t like drinking that much and I’ve never been into nightlife.
Even more unusual was that Eddy—who was drinking but not drunk—started complaining to me almost instantly about “conservatism.” He was absolutely outraged about Republicans, about Trump, about the “conservative” threat to democracy, about right-wing racism, white supremacy, and gun-nuttery. And he was more than outraged about the apparent indifference of the majority to the malefactions of the Republican minority.
We hit it off because I share Eddy’s outrage. We railed and commiserated for a couple of hours. No doubt we rubbed some “conservative” sympathizers who could overhear us the wrong way, but no one shot us. Just lucky, I guess.
After we went our separate ways, I thought about what Eddy said a lot. It seems to me that there must be a lot of Eddies out there thinking that they’ve fallen through the looking glass.
So to all you other Eddies, here is an open letter based on our conversation. I hope it makes you feel less alone. I hope it raises your spirits. I hope it suggests a different mode of action we decent Americans can pursue to put a stop to Republicans ransacking of our once proud democracy.
The virtues of decency are many. Decent Americans love justice, rational government, and democratic liberty. Decent Americans are hard-working, prudent, and tolerant. Decent Americans cherish the trait that makes us most human: the drive to improve continually by recognizing our errors and correcting them, especially when those errors involve harming others unreflectively.
Among the virtues is an inclination toward patience. Decent Americans have always had this virtue. It was mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, the statement that made Americans a separate people. “Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
What does this virtue look like in practice? We put up with injustices so long as their “evils are sufferable.” Lincoln repeated this sentiment in his 1838 speech to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield. “[L]et me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, nor that grievances may not arise, for the redress of which, no legal provisions have been made.—I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say, that, although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least possible delay; but, till then, let them, if not too intolerable, be borne with.”
It is a great virtue to bear with injustices, especially when they occur to us. Both the Framers and Lincoln recognized that when they conceded that we should let the evils continue while they are “sufferable” or “not too intolerable.”
But there comes a time when injustice is longer sufferable.
Decent Americans have suffered the injustices of “conservatism” for decades. We hoped, I imagine, that “conservatives” would eventually see the errors of their ways. We hoped, I imagine, that when the will of the majority was made clear enough, “conservatives” would admit their errors and take their natural place as the loyal minority, agreeing that their “opinions” and “beliefs” were not in line with the people’s will. We hoped, I imagine, that they would continue to advocate for their unpopular minority “ideas” within the system established by the Framers, trying to gain support through rational debate and trying to convince the majority to adopt their way of “thinking.” We hoped, I imagine, that the continued failure of their “ideas” to appeal to the majority would, over time, moderate their out-of-step “ideas.”
Our hopes have been frustrated. Our patience has continued while “conservatives” first became power-hungry political barracudas in the 1990s and early 2000s, then resurrected the KKK after Obama’s election, then elevated the most vapid, shameless, and criminal creature in America to the presidency.
Now the Republican party is no longer merely “conservative,” no longer merely out of step with the generally progressive ideals of the majority. Now the Republican party is purely out to maintain what power it has by any means, even the suspension of the Constitution if that is required.
The injustices being committed by Republicans in America are no longer sufferable.
We decent Americans must thus make a very difficult change. We must decide to suspend our virtue of patience. We must recognize that what is, under almost all circumstances, an ethical and praiseworthy trait, has become the opposite—not because we have changed, but because evil has taken advantage of us.
We must decide deliberately to abandon our patience and take up the right of the majority under true democratic government to insist upon its will.
Decent Americans, which constitute the vast majority of our citizens, can no longer suffer these evils:
Imposition of minority rule by gerrymandering
Maintenance of minority rule by even more extreme gerrymandering
Maintenance of minority rule by voter suppression
Maintenance of minority rule by changing laws to favor the minority
Attempts to overturn the will of the people by preventing duly elected officials from taking office
Imposition of minority religious “beliefs” limiting abortion and other aspects of women’s health care
Imposition of minority cultish “beliefs” about guns and the Second Amendment
Imposition of minority economic “beliefs” that favor brutish capitalism
Imposition of racist and gender-phobic policies
Obstruction of government functions
Imposition of anti-Enlightenment ignorance minority rule of education
Rampant spoliation of the economy by tax giveaways
Destruction of unions
Abuse of the First Amendment
Propaganda posing as “news” or “opinion”
Wild conspiracy theories
Arrogant and power-hungry rich people immune to shame or economic pressure
The latter items in the list are the evils propagated by Republicans at all times. But the earlier items on the list are new and far more dangerous. Decent America can limit the damage from the latter items just by replacing Republicans with Democrats at election time. But the earlier items remove our ability to vote for decent Americans.
This is now completely intolerable.
Decent America must temporarily abandon its image of itself as virtuously patient. Patience in the face of Republican evil has become a vice. We can return to patience when we have secured democracy. For now, we must become fiercely impatient. Decent America must take up the sword of the majority and smite the entire Republican party.
I can already hear the responses to such a martial cry. “You can’t tar all of them with the same brush. There are good Republicans too.”
This comes from the our patient training. But we can’t give in to this any longer. Upwards of 80 per cent of Republicans still back Trump. Since 2016, decent America has been hoping that ethical Republicans would rein in the insurrectionists in their party. It has not happened. Indeed, that segment has gotten much, much worse. There are either no ethical Republicans left or those that remain are not ethical enough to stand up against their party’s evil.
We must lay down our debating rules and take up the arms of democracy against the barbaric Republicans who would tear it to shred to keep power.
But how?
First of all, while we still have the vote, every last one of us had better turn out next year to vote against every single Republican that appears on any ballot anywhere in the country. We must punish the entire party for its evil in the same proportions that we disapprove of all its evil desires.
If we defeat them by the 77 percent of us who support abortion rights or the 86 percent of us who support gun background checks, they would get the message. They could no longer pretend that they are in the majority because they receive nearly half the votes in many contests. Nor could they continue their idiotic trope about election fraud when they get tens of millions fewer votes than their opponents.
Indeed, if we do not punish the Republican party severely at the next election and replace them with Democrats who will restore the sanctity of the ballot, there will not be a meaningful ballot any longer. And there goes our ability to stop Republican malevolence.
Second, we must get much more vocal about our condemnation of the Republican party. It is no longer enough to take on individual policies or individual bad actors in the Republican party.
Yes, abortion bans and unlimited access to firearms and astronomical wealth inequality and ruthless capitalism and blithe indifference to climate change and voter suppression legislation are each individually reprehensible “policies.”
Yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert and Jim Jordan and Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville are each individually repugnant homunculi.
But we dissipate our outrage when we focus on any of them too closely. We need to marshal our majority rage against the entire Republican party. The reprehensible “policies” and the repugnant homunculi are only discrete villainies, only shriveled, disgusting raisins in the disgusting spotted dick that is the Republican party.
Decent Americans need to speak out in whatever ways they have at their disposal against the entire Republican party. If you have the ear of the public in some way, say, as a public official or a celebrity or a pastor, you must start telling people that it is not just the policies you oppose. It is not just the personalities that you oppose. You must tell them that you oppose the entire mindset that leads to the reprehensible policies and repugnant personalities.
People need to know that this is not about politics as usual. This is about politics period. If we don’t punish Republicans severely at the next election. There will be no real politics left in America—only the sham politics of authoritarian minority rule.
If you don’t have the ears of the public, but you have their eyes, then you need to attack the entire Republican party in your op-eds, in your magazine stories, in your journal articles, in letters to the editor, in social media posts. People need to know that the majority will not suffer the insufferable Republican party any longer.
If you have neither the ears nor the eyes of the public, but only the ears and eyes of those closest to you, then you need to tell them that you and many others will not suffer under the yoke of minority rule any longer. People need to know that the majority will not let the minority Republican party continue to impose its evil upon the rest of us without consequence. The first consequence will be at the polls with massive defeat in the fall of 2024. The second will be quick stripping of all “conservative” oppression from every aspect of society after the current unjust control of the minority Republican party is toppled.
So we decent Americans have two tasks.
First, like Eddy, we have to make everyone aware that we are putting aside our virtue of patience and assuming the warlike mail of the majority to throw off the oppressive and intolerable yoke of the minority. Let no Republican say they did not see their just punishment coming.
Second, we must launch ourselves at the polling places like never before. There we will exact the necessary punishment on the Republican party. There we will push them back behind the gates of hell which they burst asunder to mount their vengeful attack on decency, on justice, and on democracy. There we will check them once and for all and, God willing, push the Republican party into the extinction suffered by other American political parties that tried to abuse the people for its own ends.
Here’s to you, Eddy, and to all you Eddies out there. Make your outrage known in whatever way you can. Reach as many people as you can. But above all, show up at the polls to show the door to the Republican party.
We’re all in this together. It’s the Republican party or decency.
I know which side Eddy and I are on.