Extremely Ripe Opportunity
Editor’s Note: What follows is a text from my daughter Dorothy Day Dark shared with her permission. The image above once functioned as her passport photo. I’m so proud of her I can hardly stand it sometimes. Some of her content can be found here. Stay safe, everyone.
Here are the potential pros I have wrenched forth from the current situation so far:
-The public has made the point that big celebrity and big media (despite the depth of Trump’s reach within both entities) are not north stars that people will blindly pledge allegiance to
-The Harris campaign did not get away with leaving Abbas Alawieh on the curb outside the DNC, waiting for a Palestinian American to be allowed to take the stage
-The Democratic Party is being held to a new standard, one that is more interested in sincerity and accountability than wishful thinking and ‘nauseating optimism.’ They’re going to have to reckon with a constituency they claim to represent but haven’t tried to understand fully. Democrats have thought, for a long while now, that they faithfully represent a working class majority that feels completely condescended upon and alienated by Democratic Washington jargon. They’re gonna have to earn people’s trust, after assuming they could sidestep a primary and serve up a candidate who was VP of an administration that JUST dished out four years of empty promises and hypocrisy which constituents were expected to just stomach.
-I think this an extremely ripe opportunity for Democrats to push for systemic reform and rise to the occasion.
I’m channeling the prophet Jeremiah more than Jesus today, to be honest. I am a citizen of a self-proclaimed Christian nation that, given a pretty clear choice, voted to call immigrants vermin, voted to deport children who were born here, voted to take away health insurance for the sick, voted to side with Vladimir Putin, voted to prosecute opposition leaders for being the opposition, voted to look the other way at insurrection, voted to eradicate the existence of transgendered people, voted to make our gay and lesbian neighbors afraid, voted to make my Jewish neighbors afraid of Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden, and above all voted for a ticket that praises those “who hate the right people.” When the American people tell me who they are, I believe them.
Democrats are not going to change that with a different candidate or a different message (unless they change their message to hate and fear). We face an “opportunity” now similar what Jerusalem faced when the Babylonians were outside the walls or that Germans faced once Hitler took power in 1933. It’s the opportunity to learn, eventually, from a disaster that is too late to stop. A lot of human suffering will occur in the meantime. And more people, especially women and the young, will run for their lives from an American version of Christianity that to them looks like a religion of hate.
Seeing this verse in Malachi this morning:
"At that time I will put you on trial. I am eager to witness against all sorcerers and adulterers and liars. I will speak against those who cheat employees of their wages, who oppress widows and orphans, or who deprive the foreigners living among you of justice, for these people do not fear me,” says the Lord.
Malachi 3:5
Particular to Trump's being elected and the probable and imminent rise of Pierre Poilievre to Canada's PM, I wonder if we are being put on trial.
We are entering an era where to demonize the foreigner is not only permitted but praised…where the incomes of the rich grow at the expense of living wages for low income people…where the cries of the widow, the orphan and socially orphaned are tuned out.