Asked yesterday by a radio host about Trump's endorsement of his Senate campaign, anti-MAGA Maryland Republican Larry Hogan said “I didn’t seek it, I didn’t want to have it and I have no interest in it.” There aren’t many Republicans who would say that— and it probably will anger some Republican voters, especially the ones who have bought in to the whole MAGA ideology, like in Garrett County, where Trump got 77% of the vote or even in Allegany and Caroline counties where Trump won with over 65% of the vote. There are plenty of Andy Harris voters on the Eastern Shore and up north who have more in common with MAGAdonian psychos in Wyoming and the Florida Panhandle than with the mainstream suburban conservatives who elected Hogan governor. But I haven’t seen any other Republican candidates— anywhere— rejecting Trump’s endorsement. I bet poor Bob Good wishes he had gotten it!
Yesterday, before Hogan had rejected Trump’s endorsement, John Pavlovitz was making a very cogent case to Trump supporters why they should… stop being Trump supporters: Dear Trump Supporters, Trump Hates You. He began by acknowledging that he and other anti-Trump communicators are “mystified that many of those who voted for him are somehow doubling down in their allegiance, even while witnessing what appears to us to be widespread criminality, gross incompetence and a toxic malice toward the general population. You may even be one of these people still steadfast in your support— and yet this is still not what our fight is about. The God's honest truth friend, is that we are not at war with you— we are at war for you. We're actually standing alongside you... [for] your future, your health, your family; the air you will breathe, the opportunity you have, the world you will walk into. It isn't an either/or aspiration. It is not a matter of us winning and you losing.”
You see, lost in translation across the divides of political parties and in the dizzying noise of partisan talk shows and social media trolls— is the reality that we are on your side, because we don't believe there is another side to take. We are in this thing together; the 99.5 percent of this nation who were not born billionaires and don’t have our names on buildings and weren’t on Reality TV shows.
This resistance isn't about some liberal agenda and it isn't about the Democratic Party either. It's never been about anything as small as that. This is about humanity, of which you belong— a humanity that is gravely threatened by this man and by what he is doing in these days to our schools, our healthcare, our personal freedoms, our national identity.
We do this work and wage this war and engage in this activism because we know something:
We know that non-Democrats get cancer, grow old, lose jobs, and need care when they are sick and disabled and depressed, too. And we know that when this happens, the fear will be as real, the burden as massive, and the urgency as great, regardless of your politics or your religion or who you supported in the election. Tragedy, poverty illness, and desperation are nonpartisan in their visitation and they do not discriminate in the damage they do.
And we also know that FoxNews and the celebrity evangelists and Republican politicians won't tell you any of this. Their business is to paint the world in the stark black and white of the good people and the evildoers, the righteous and the wicked, the America-lovers— and the Democrats. They broker in conflict, it is their lifeblood.
And this all-or-nothing, fear-saturated story they sell you never seems to include the fact that you are as vulnerable as any of us to the dangers we're now contesting. In fact, we know that this may all mean you don't believe a damn word we're saying right now, but we can only say it and mean it and hope you hear our hearts through the haze of fake news and pulpit damnation.
We don't pushback against this man and his Administration because we believe that by defeating him we will somehow defeat you. It may feel that way when our outrage at what they're doing begins to spill over into the things you believe to be true.
But anything we win for equality and diversity and opportunity right now is for you to share in fully, which is the point of all this.
And that's why the fact that you see this as a fight with us, that you believe we see you as the enemy is so unfortunate because this is misplaced anger and misdirected fear and it conceals the truth.
Lost on so many of you right now, is the reality that those of us resisting Donald Trump care far more about your children than he does.
He doesn't care about you or your children or America or anything beyond himself.
The man who we resist will never want for healthcare, never find himself homeless, never know the struggle of the working poor, never be invested in this nation the way we are— all of us.
He is not for you or for America, friend.
And so to defend us (and to defend you) we will resist him.
Melinda Gates agrees. She never endorsed anyone of any party for president— until yesterday when she tweeted “I’ve never endorsed a presidential candidate before. But this year’s election stands to be so enormously consequential for women and families that, this time, I can’t stay quiet. Women deserve a leader who cares about the issues they face and is committed to protecting their safety, their health, their economic power, their reproductive rights, and their ability to freely and fully participate in a functioning democracy. In this election, the contrast couldn’t be greater, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. I will be voting for President Biden.”
His head must have exploded when he saw this yesterday:
So is it also called "evolved" to not detest people who vote for the other genocide party?