Don't Lose Heart: A Blueprint for Staying in the Fight

[summer_in_TX]

This post from Adam Kinzinger has stayed with me all day.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-191391455

Something is shifting. Look around and you’ll see it: people who were silent, or skeptical, or simply not paying attention are beginning to pay attention now. Some of them voted for MAGA. Some of them didn’t vote at all. Some of them believed the promises and are now watching those promises curdle into something they don’t recognize.

These people matter. And we need to make room for them.

This isn’t about abandoning our principles. It’s about understanding what we’re actually defending. Democracy is not a club for the already-converted. It is a system that belongs to everyone — and a pro-democracy coalition that keeps shrinking will eventually lose, no matter how right it is.

Here is a reasonable, firm standard: welcome anyone who is willing to say that MAGA was wrong. Not a perfect accounting of every past position, not ideological purity — just the basic honesty to admit that what happened was not okay, that January 6th was not okay, that cruelty dressed up as strength is not okay. That shooting Americans in the face is not okay.

Much good stuff at the link.

[snot]

1. I'd go farther.

I don't care whether or not they "admit they were wrong"; all I care about is, can we stop name-calling and fighting each other long enough to work together on the issues we agree on?

Obviously, there are wedge issues; and I'm not saying we shouldn't push for what we believe in; but we need to make sure we're leaving space to make progress on the things most of us on the left or the right do agree on, e.g., prosecuting elites who use their wealth and power to the detriment of the rest of us, narrowing the wealth & income gaps, restraining our involvement in foreign wars, and affordable health care.

I also hope that most of us are also coming to recognize more fully the dangers of acquiescing in curtailments of free speech, privacy, and due process whether done directly by the government or indirectly via government pressure on third party platforms, contractors, or others.

[summer_in_TX]

2. Yes, the pressure to conform to purity tests is as close-minded when we do it as when they do.

And it is the opposite of free speech.