John Pavlovitz recently wrote in a Substack, “It’s Time to Pick a Hill Worth Dying On.” In this post he basically says it’s time to choose, that one can no longer sit on the sidelines thinking everything is okay, or will be okay, if one waits long enough. To do so is essentially giving in to defeat and allowing for a country you, your parents, or grandparents, wouldn’t recognize (my words, not Pavlovitz’s).
I’m wondering what is your line? What will it take before you get involved in defending democracy, freedom, and a government that does more good than harm. As stated in The Dictator’s Handbook (Bueno de Mesquita and Smith), “Good ideas that help the people are rarely the path to power in a dictatorship,” which aptly describes the Musk/Trump administration as what they have been doing so far is doing all they can to harm people, here at home and around the globe.
Is your line the canceling of so many government contracts, worth billions of dollars, without warning? When, in doing so, thousands of jobs are lost and all of those billions that flow into mainly the U.S. economy now flow, in many instances, to Musk companies. That is thousands of people who aren’t paying taxes, may lose their homes, who no longer have health insurance, and who aren’t contributing to the local economy in that they aren’t shopping any longer.
Is your line the plan of Republicans in Congress cutting around $880 billion from Medicaid? A cut such as this means your local rural medical facility or hospital may close. It means nursing home financial assistance is gone causing you to now have to take on the medical and physical care of an aging parent, one who may have late stage dementia or other life-threatening illnesses. There are 72 million Americans who rely on various amounts of Medicaid to survive. Are you and your family personally financially able to make up any loss in Medicaid funds?
Is your line losing your ability to vote? The SAVE Act, which I’ve discussed before, would take millions of women out of the voting pool. Since many married people take the last names of their spouses, mainly wives, which means their last names no longer match what is on their birth certificates, which then means they won’t be able to register to vote or vote in elections. It limits what is considered a legal ID for voting as a backdoor in limiting college students’ ability to vote. It eliminates mail-in voting, meaning about 20 million people, the elderly and the disabled would find it difficult to have their voices heard. It would put current voter purges on steroids to eliminate what have historically been, blacks and hispanic voters.
Is your line marriage equality? There is, and has been, chatter about making same-sex marriage illegal again. The hope is to get Obergefell v. Hodges overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court as they did with Rove v. Wade.
Is your line the illegal deportation and imprisonment and separation of children of people seeking asylum, here on college visas, or revoking the legal status of refugees seeking a better place to live and who may have helped the U.S. in foreign countries? This means those many hard working men and women picking our food and building our houses are gone; are you ready to pick and build your own in backbreaking work in heat or cold?
Is your line allowing a billionaire to break into government agencies, download private and top secret data to private servers, arbitrarily shut down whole agencies and cancel contracts, randomly fire entire staffs without thought of what public good their jobs do, and withhold information from the press and elected officials? Or allowing the same billionaire to then award his own companies some of the contracts he and his hackers cancelled, in a sense looting our hard earned and paid taxes?
In the Dictator’s Handbook referenced above, the authors provide five basic rules leaders can use for success in any system of government. One that stands out is Rule 5, which reads, “Don’t take money out of your supporters’ pockets to make people’s lives better.” We are seeing this with the Musk/Trump administration. All they are doing is to make all our lives worse while ensuring the oligarchy, which to me includes Musk, Trump, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Koch Brothers, the Walton (Walmart) family, the Sinclairs, Thiel, Crow, the Murdochs, and any other who bent the knee by ending DEI policies or giving contributions to Trump’s inauguration committee, such as Cook, Iger (ABC), Cornell, and Laguarta. Think about who had front row seats at the inauguration (hint: it wasn’t politicians or everyday voters).
So, what will it take for you to defend your family, your livelihood, your daughters, your freedoms, your country?
What is your line?
I’ve often said we all need to be involved in saving democracy in the ways which fit our lives and our comfort levels. These can be from blogging, to reposting on social media, to calling your elected officials, to letters to the editor, to donating to organizations, to marching in the streets. Nothing is too little or too much. Here are some ways to get involved from the comfort of your own homes over the next few weeks:
- Donating to two Florida congressional candidates to help retake the U.S. House of Representatives: Gay Valimont and Josh Weil.
- Donating to Susan Crawford who is running for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The courts are all that appear to be standing between democracy and autocracy right now.
- Call your congressional members and let them know as one of the people they represent, it is past time for Musk to be fired and DOGE dismantled. Call this number and the switchboard will connect you to your representative or senator: 202-224-3121. Even if you don’t know who your members are, they will find them for you based on your address, which they will ask you to provide.
- Call the White House switchboard to express your disappointment in what is happening and that Musk must go: 202-456-1414 (switchboard) or 202-456-1111 (comments). I recommend the switchboard myself.
- Sign up for General Strike and commit to participating.
- Download the app Five Calls to help let your elected officials know you are paying attention and don’t approve. Website: https://5calls.org/
- Continue to boycott companies who have bent the knee or no longer believe in equality based on their recent actions. Don’t buy from national chains or companies, such as Target, Amazon, or Walmart.
- Write letters to your local papers expressing your disappointment and tell your stories of how the Republican administration is harming your families.
- Boycott Amazon, and any other company owned or operated by Bezos, such as the Washington Post, from now until March 15 (I know it may cause withdrawal, but you can do it for all the reasons above).
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 