Dear Self 2018
Dear Self,
If 2017 was the worst year of your life, bookended by incomprehensible tweets about Inauguration crowd sizes and climate change, I invite you to look beyond your cynical hysteria and forward to 2018.
If 2018 was the best year of your life, bookended by Federal government shutdowns that just a few years ago you would have cheered on ideological grounds, a one hundred percent increase in personal net worth, and exponential growth of your #RadicalCentrist brand, I urge you to review the real cost of that success: who pays for this?
I invite you to reflect on the future in light of history’s—recent and less so—actualities. Whether you want to attribute the actuality of Trump’s inertia to lack of vision, to political ineptitude or to strategic design, most of the doomsday scenarios predicted by a combination of #NeverTrump Conservative purists and #NotMyPresident activists still remain in the realm of circumstantial allegation.
I urge you to reflect on the chimera of the present in light of what history shines beyond you. Most everything you predicted for 2018 is still true. The economy still roars, ISIS remains neutralized, LGBTQ walk the streets as freely as they did two years ago, and a persistent legacy of a conservative judiciary (while championed by a charlatan) remains.
I invite you, despite your last eighteen months of naysaying, to join me in a moment of zen reflection. Internationally, historically and domestically the dueling rhetoric that has poisoned our collective mental wellness remains completely out of balance with the actuality of our Union’s state.
I urge you, despite the last two years of excuse-making, to admit that you were wrong. Globally, our stature is a shambles as a feckless international policy shuns longtime allies while reaching out to complicit, truth-hating authoritarians. History, even recent, is being re-written and reinterpreted to malign competent leadership. Domestically, dog-whistle rhetoric has transformed formerly rational debates about immigration reform and social equity into unwinnable arguments that take race to the front and center.
If 2017 was the worst year of your life, that’s not on Republicans and not on Donald Trump. It’s not on Democrats or Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton.
If 2018 was the best year of your life, that’s despite the extreme divisiveness between Donald Trump and his own hijacked party. He’s pushed out the last decent Republicans, one of the biggest mass exoduses by either party since 1974: Flake, Hatch, Ryan, Corker, and Goodlatte (to name a few) have seen their ability to craft meaningful legislation (and alliances) thoroughly undermined. Somehow, Hillary Clinton is still being invoked as a false bogeyman meant to extend the rigged 2016 Presidential campaign. Reaction to Trump’s failure of leadership has propelled Nancy Pelosi back into the speakership.
Internationally, America’s influence is, at worst, baselined. America’s diplomats are actively renegotiating weak and unfair trade and climate deals. Global trade, except for oil shahs, NoKo pseudo-gods or Iranian terror-sponsors, continues to boom. ISIL’s caliphate is all but decimated. Russia’s influence, which reached its zenith during the last half of the previous president’s leadership-from-behind, languishes. The Holy Land, Central Africa, Latin America and Middle East are no farther from peace than they were under previous administrations.
Internationally, America’s influence is decimated. NATO, the UN, the G8, Climate Accords are reeling from attacks by this administration. Centuries-old alliances are endangered. The ridiculous trade war with China is driving up the costs of everyday goods and wreaking havoc on domestic businesses’ ability to plan for the future. ISIL, on the verge of defeat, is being thrown a bone as America withdraws from from Syria and Afghanistan. Russia, China, and Iran are ascending as America’s relative influence declines. The Holy Land, Central Africa, Latin America and the Middle East are no closer to peace than they were under previous administrations.
If 2017 was the worst year of your life, you may have overreacted.
If 2018 was the best year of your life, you may have ignored away the cultural costs.
Historically, Americans have elected near-authoritarian POTUSes, and often under the banner of populism. Populism, by its very nature, pushes the boundaries of constitutional rule-of-law. It pushes against courts and establishments. Populism is rabble-roused and transformative; it’s fortunately short-lived. When institutions have become too unresponsive to the will of the mob, the mob has endorsed men like Andrew- “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,”-Jackson. It’s fallen in line behind habeas corpus-less, rail-splitting Lincoln. It’s embraced Teddy “trust-busting” Roosevelt. These presidents built cults around themselves and pushed the limits of decorum. Generally un-presidential, they redefined what presidential was.
Historically, Americans have elected near-authoritarian POTUSes, and often under the banner of Populism. Populism, by its very nature, pushes the boundaries of constitutional rule-of-law. It pushes against courts and establishments. Populism is rabble-roused and transformative; it’s fortunately short-lived. When institutions have become too unresponsive to the will of the mob, the mob has endorsed men like Andrew- “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,”-Jackson. It’s fallen in line behind habeas corpus-less, rail-splitting Lincoln. It’s embraced Teddy “trust-busting” Roosevelt. These presidents built cults around themselves and pushed the limits of decorum. Generally un-presidential, they redefined what presidential was. The current President lacks what each of these transformers had: a vision, an ideological core, a selflessly aggressive political message. Their populisms were less concerned with political gains than they were with enforcing the will of the “common man.”
America survived the crises these men inflicted upon the establishment. If you hold atrocities of the current president’s rhetoric up against the lens of history, you see—minus the hysteria—that America has resisted and overcome such precedents.
America thrived in the wake of the crises these men inflicted upon the establishment. Overcoming the atrocities of the current president’s assaults upon America’s Constitution, America’s institutions, and America’s moral leadership will be more difficult than ever. America’s DNA is changed.
If 2017 was the worst year of your life, you may have been manipulated.
If 2018 was the best year of your life, you were manipulated.
Domestically, America’s on edge. America’s been on edge before and has survived Civil War, big-city uprisings and economic meltdowns. Americans are in a hyperbolic rhetorical cycle in which the detractors who said George W. Bush was a racist Nazi are now saying the same things about the current focus of their ire.
Domestically, America’s more on edge than in the past half century. America’s been on edge before and has survived Civil War, big-city uprisings and economic meltdowns. We are on the cusp of each of these again. Racists are re-empowered after decades of marginalization. Metropolitan values are pitted against ruralists and suburbanites. Economic volatility wreaks daily havoc on those trying to plan for the future.
The rhetoric in 2017 validated victimhood: anti-gay zealots, racists and misogynists have twisted pseudo-Constitutional arguments into complaints that their perceived persecutions are as egregious as marriage bans, gerrymandering and system-endorsed glass ceilings. More obnoxiously, the most powerful man in the world cries victim to a media that mocks him while the cynical media claims victimhood to the petty instigations of the world’s most powerful man.
The rhetoric in 2018 validated callousness: anti gay zealots, racists, and misogynists have twisted pseudo-Constitutional arguments into complaints that their over-dramatized persecutions are as egregious as LGBTQ attacks, voter suppression, and reinforced systemic patriarchy. The most powerful man in the world continues to pick fights with the truth, to disqualify challenges to the patriarchy, and to undermine America’s place as the beacon of democracy.
For all of the grumbling and gnashing of teeth, 2017’s political inertia has yielded very little actual change. Establishmentarians like you should be rejoicing.
For all of the grumbling and gnashing of teeth, 2018’s political inertia has yielded little progress toward sustainable policy. Radical Centrists like you should be disgusted.
Despite a flurry of mostly symbolic proclamations, travel bans have been neutralized, transgender military moratoria have been abandoned, Obamacare survives, federal income taxes for most people reading this are cut and American businesses are suddenly internationally competitive. The worst things about 2017 were hysterical speculations that remain unrealized: no worldwide economic collapse, no treacherous collusion between the Russians and the eventual president, no rounding up of gays, no mass deportation of peace-loving immigrants, no rollback of civil rights, no new wars, the Internet-of-Things persists.
What has been done by this administration is wrong in countless ways. What can’t be done legislatively has been acted on by decree. Deficit spending is near all-time highs, ObamaCare remains broken, comprehensive immigration reform remains un-addressed, individual tax cuts are non-permanent, and American businesses are caught in the crosshairs of a stupid, unnecessary trade war. The worst predictions of 2017 are coming true. The world economies, in the wake of America-first myopia, are stuttering, making markets for American goods more tenuous. The inner circle around the President is collapsing in the wake of Russian collusion, even if the president himself wasn’t involved. A rash of discounted transgender murders has emerged without comment, legal immigrants are seeing their status undermined, attempts to limit enfranchisement are increasing, trade wars are affecting the way of life for non-military Americans, and attacks on the media have fundamentally changed how we interact with information.
If 2017 was the worst year of your life, that’s because you’ve been concerned with what might happen and not with what’s actually happened.
If 2018 was the best year of your life, that’s because you’ve ignored what has happened and not what you’ve been told, by the ministry of information, has actually happened.
I’m inviting you to join me as I dispense with the hysterical rhetoric. Join me in advocating common sense spending of our national resources on education, defense and infrastructure. Join me in recognizing the issues that populism validates while tempering authoritarianism in its wake. Let’s bring the perceived motives of our politicians in line with the actuality of their works. Join me in disempowering identity victimhood and instead asserting the power of individuals within a kinder, gentler village of equals. Let’s re-embrace friends and neighbors with whom disagreements grew into estrangements. Let’s live love.
I’m inviting you to join me as I dispense with a willful ignorance of what’s actually happening to the nation you love. Join me in advocating common sense spending of our national resources on education, defense, and infrastructure. Join me in recognizing the issues that populism validates while standing against authoritarianism in its wake. Join me in recognizing the renewed assaults upon minorities. Let’s re-embrace friends’ and neighbors’—re-engage in meaningful, even if uncomfortable—discourse. Let’s live love and empowerment.
Join me, in 2018, looking forward and not back: fearless, actual and optimistic. You, an admirer of activist spirits, and me, just a radical centrist with conservative leanings, putting hysteria behind us and looking forward to our best year ever.
Join me, in 2019, looking sideways and forward: fearless, actual, and optimistic. You, an admirer of activist spirits, and me, just a #RadicalCentrist with conservative leanings, putting reality in focus and looking forward to a year of reckoning.
If 2018 is the best year of your life. It’s because you made it. We made it.
If 2019 is the best year of your life, it’s because you made it. We made it.
Sincerely,
Regards,
Me
Me
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