Al Alessi – November 15th, 2023
Some of the comments on our Windsor County Democratic listserv following the heavily-indicted former President’s visit to Claremont last Saturday, made it quite clear that we are NOT just a different partisan group from the MAGAs. They are very different. Unreasonable. Unable to reason, or listen, or engage with facts and logic. It is what goes with a Cult — Jamestown, Guyana comes to mind, and the Branch Davidians. I’ll leave analysis of cults to others, and focus on what we need to do over the next roughly 11 months and 3 weeks.
By we I intend to mean those of us not in a Cult, where policy differences are debated respectfully, and solutions sought with the understanding that governing is not easy, and it’s especially not easy when roughly 1/3rd of our country is in a Cult. The rough middle, from center-right to center-left, is, almost by definition, a difficult group to fire up. Yes, we have policies we mostly share, with 2/3rds of our nation greatly concerned about gun safety, 2/3rds of our nation committed to a woman’s right to choose, and 2/3rds of our nation committed to addressing the ever closer risks of extreme climate change, to name just a few. Yet with just those 3 issues there exist a myriad of options, recommended steps and differing opinions, so part of what aligns the great Middle is our accepting the nuances, the complexities, and the gray areas of solving almost anything for 330 million Americans and, really, for the entire world.
If you’re in this great block of rational Americans that embrace valid, respectful and open-minded debate, that is exactly what is at stake in 2024. Having such debate does not exist in Russia; there is no free press, there are no free elections with a peaceful transfer of power, and all power resides in a small group of billionaires, led by Putin, who pretty much do as they will. Democracy is easily tested by autocracy because autocrats will do anything, outside the bounds of law, and we are so tested now. Lose democracy, and we run the risk of not seeing it again in decades.
Some of you on the further left perhaps will say that we’re already there, and the Democratic Party is no different. That oligarchs rule in America. Well, they are trying, that’s for sure. There are weaknesses in our system that have made it hard to change the system fast enough. Democracy doesn’t guarantee no errors, or no bad players, true. It does guarantee the chance for remedy, however, where a Senator Whitehouse can put great public effort into changing the ethics of our Supreme Court. I’m reminded of the state judge in PA that sent children under 18 to jail by the many hundreds, for things like truancy, to help feed his friend’s for-profit jail (for-profit jails should not even exist), and he received a lucrative kickback. Do you remember? In an autocracy there is no redress, ever, across all such events. In a democracy this judge was exposed, and will spend the rest of his life in jail. The possibility that the right thing can ever happen is what we’re fighting for in 2024.
We need to join together on this one issue — will we have a democracy or not? Everything else I’ll listen to. There is plenty of nuance to spread around and review to our common benefit. How we solve a gun-laden America, cover the health needs of all, educate in the best way, include all in the sharing of our rights and benefits as citizens, the deficit, crime, on and on — nuance it up! Debate away! I have my opinions too, just as you do, but on this one score, of whether we are a democracy or not, there can be no equivocation. The Democratic Party defends that alone. There is no other choice. 3rd party efforts are divisive to the objective of maintaining democracy at this point in time. We can take sides again and debate the nuances of good government once the evil perpetrated by Mr. Trump is in the far distance.
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