Letter to a young Liberal: How to finally win.
Dear J——,
I’m sorry to hear about your dejection.
I know the feeling. I’ve been there. And for a very long time. You stand up for what is right again and again. But those who fight for what is wrong keep coming back, keep overturning change, keep toppling reason and progress, keep reimposing ignorance and fear. It certainly is discouraging.
But would it be a surprise to learn that you and your generation already have the power to change all that? And that you could do it in literally one day, with very little effort?
You say that you’ve heard all the promises before. You say that the problems have become too large, too complex for our political system to handle.
I hear you. And to show I’m not minimizing the challenges, here is a short list of problems, any one of which seems insoluble given our current politics.
Climate change is going to devastate the earth during your lifetime. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
Hatred of the other—whether it takes the form of racism, xenophobia, political extremism and white supremacy, LGBTQ+ discrimination, or just plain meanness—is at an all time high. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
Guns are everywhere and second-amendment derangement syndrome is killing more people, and more young people, every year. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
Income inequality is worse than it ever has been. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
Women’s reproductive rights are under attack as never before in your lifetime—or in most people’s lifetimes. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
A great achievement of the scientific Enlightenment, namely, government-run public health programs, has been undermined by vicious and ruthless political opportunists. Yet no matter whom you vote for, nothing seems to get better.
One of the two major political parties, the Republican party—the one that actively abets all the damage just mentioned and more besides—has become overtly authoritarian and is working non-stop to subvert our elections so that it won't matter whom you vote for—their party will always be in power.
The times are perilous and have been for decades. So how can I claim that you hold the key to changing all this when no one else has been able to do so?
Because it’s a simple matter of numbers. And I know the numbers.
The older generations have fought to a standstill about all the problems facing you. Slightly more than half of them, Democrats and some Independents, want to solve the problems you want to solve. The minority who oppose them, Republicans and some Independents, have exploited every opportunity to stymie the will of the majority.
Now there are some 70,000,000 young people who are eligible to vote. But only a small percentage of them use that power. If most of them voted against the opponents of progress, they would almost cancel out all the anti-progress votes in the nation. That would mean that something like two-thirds would be voting for progress against about one-third voting against it.
Nothing could stop such a movement. No gerrymandering, no voter-suppression tactics, no voter-nullification laws could stand up to a wave like that.
So the key to all the problems you want to solve is indeed in your hands and in the hands of your fellow young people.
If the vast majority of you would just get up on November 8, go to the polls, stay there as long as it takes, and vote for Democrats, you would wake up to entirely different world on November 9—a world in which all the problems you worry about would start being solved.
That is why I say you already have the power and can change everything in literally one day, with very little effort.
No doubt you are still skeptical. You have voted for Democrats before and nothing got better. They seem to be no better than Republicans.
I assure you they are better than Republicans. For one thing, they want to solve the problems rather than perpetuate the status quo. For another thing, they want democracy to continue rather than hand it over to an authoritarian like Trump or a Trump wannabe.
The reason why Democrats have not managed to make things better is that many of them are no more courageous than Republicans. They fear that they may lose their elections if they do the things they really want to do, like solve the problems that worry you.
And up till now, that has been a rational fear given the nearly half-and-half split in the electorate between the decent majority and the indecent minority.
But you and your generation can change all that overnight.
The very next day after such a wave election, you will see Republicans in retreat. You will see Democrats rushing to tee up laws that they will pass beginning in January 2023 when they take over Congress overwhelmingly—laws that will begin to solve all the problems you worry about.
They will do this because they will have the seats in Congress to do it, and because they will know that almost two-thirds of the country is behind them rather than just about half.
So you don't have to keep worrying about all the problems individually. There is only one thing you need to worry about: how to get almost all your generation out to the polls on November 8 to vote for Democrats.
How are you going to do that? I don’t know. You belong to the generation that knows how to marshal social media and other forms of digital persuasion. And that seems to be what it takes to move young people to take action on any issue.
But isn’t it better to have only one problem to solve instead of many? One problem which, when solved, will lead to the solution of all the others?
Still, judging from your concerns about your generation's state of mind, you may still be wondering how to muster the will for another push when you have been fighting so long and losing so much.
In my experience, you can’t convince yourself to keep fighting before you keep fighting. You achieve anything by doing it, not by looking for reasons to do it. You find the will to keep fighting by fighting, not by looking for reasons to fight.
You can, however, choose the most effective thing to fight for, the thing that has the most leverage to pry open the path to your goals.
I suggest that you should fight to get all of your generation out to the polls in November to vote for Democrats. Figure out the solution to that problem and the other solutions will follow.
And that will lift your spirits, put humankind back on the road to rational progress, and push the forces of irrational fear and hatred back into the closet—where they belong.