THE WILL TO WIN
Six months out from the midterms, we must have the resolve of America's greatest patriots
We are now exactly six months from November’s key midterm elections in the United States, and the only thing we can say with any certainty is that the authoritarian, aging blowhard disgracing our White House will:
a) try to stop or impede them, or;
b) discredit them as “fake” if they don’t go the way he likes.
The reprehensible Donald Trump has been spending a considerable amount of time greasing what should be a Republican electoral skid this November, while his bought-off Supreme Court and other lawless sub-courts scattered through the un-United States of America eagerly pitch in to blow up 250 years of democracy.
These are the authoritarian times we live in.
Trump simply won’t respect the outcome of any election he doesn’t like, which would be any outcome that threatens his total control over our House, Senate, Supreme Court, and by extension the federal budgetary process so that he can build ballrooms, start wars, and intentionally hurt the millions of Americans who used to be helped by our tax dollars.
Trump IS the Republican Party, and is not done pilfering our money to stuff in his bottomless pockets, or slobbering his name on every inanimate object he can get his fat, little fingers on.
Odious bootlickers like Mike Johnson, Sam Alito, and the billionaires who own both of them are making good and sure they are carrying out their Project 2025 plan, that Trump claimed (lied) he knew nothing about in 2024.
Day after day, we are watching all this happen, and for now have rendered ourselves powerless to stop it, while our worthless corporate media treats it all as just another cloudy day.
There is absolutely zero chance our November elections will go smoothly, and a very reasonable chance they will end up a catastrophic mess. You know it and I know it, because you have the gall to pay attention and are most likely reading this through bloodshot eyes, while your heart beats with righteous anger through achy ears.
We’re doing what we can, but at times it feels as if we are shouting helplessly into empty space, and that, too, is all a part of Republicans’ ruthless design: a hopeless electorate is a beaten electorate.
Many of us have spent the past decade screaming, marching, canvassing, calling, writing checks and postcards, and voting our worried butts off only to land in a worse place than when we started.
This isn’t just discouraging, but dreadfully devastating, and enough to make you want to just say the hell with it.
So a quick note in the middle of this worry:
Every time you get to this place of maddening hurt and frustration, remember our Black voters. These American stalwarts have been down this dark road and back again so many times they can navigate it with their eyes closed. They have been given every reason to quit and say the hell with it, as they were again last week after our ghastly Supreme Court’s racist swipe at the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but time and time again show up and do the most patriotic thing possible by voting for democracy and against the fascist Republican Party.
It is the definition of heroic, it really is.
If it wasn’t for the Black voters, we’d have already become West Russia by now.
You are not allowed to forget this.
Pep talk over.
November’s midterms will be the most important elections in U.S. history, only because the last most important elections in U.S. history went so disastrously wrong for the party with “democracy” in its name.
In 2024, we learned again, how little tens of millions of Americans think of their country — that is if they are even thinking about it all.
Apathy and disregard, as always, are the real cancer in America. Too many selfish people are suffocating the rest of us with their silence, and making it easy for fascists like Trump to blow us out.
That either changes six months from today when Americans turn out in unheard of numbers, or the story following those elections will quickly pivot to whether there is ever another federal election in America again.
Anybody who thinks I have this wrong is officially part of the problem.
Despite the steady authoritarian gusts blowing off Capitol Hill right now, I believe Americans are going to turn out and vote like never before, because frankly, from everything I have seen leading up to this column, there is every reason to believe they will.
We are in a blindingly stupid, unnecessary war, prices are rising, Trump’s approvals are in the toilet, we are hated by most of the rest of the world, and there is a real sense that America is dangerously close to slithering away into the sewer forever, having ceded the high ground to the most morally busted man in United States history.
Anybody telling you we are in a better place now than we were two years ago, should have their mouth stitched shut, because they are without truth or reason.
Remember this: We still have a chance to do great things in America and have a rollicking November. It is vitally important that you remember that, good people, because the minute you don’t it’s over, and never coming back.
We can do this.
So we will.
(D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here, and follow him on Bluesky here.)
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Stand up and fight. Don't give a single inch to these goddamned Nazi Republicans!
Thanks for the pep talk. Giving up is not an option. We will NOT give those bastards the gift of rolling over and surrendering. They've already taken too much.