The Time for Speeches is Over
American freedoms have never been secured by acting within the system.
Last weekend, California Representative Katie Porter held an outdoor town hall. A place and platform to share ideas, to speak to and address a member of American elected leadership, town halls are one of the best ways for American citizens to engage in the peaceful process of a liberated society. In a free society, ideas reign. In a liberal democracy, where tolerance and mediation are king, debates can happen peacefully as we deliberate the courses we wish to take as a group. We take a vote, the winning group makes the decision, and we move onward. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has been breathing air and listening to the wind over the last five years that this isn’t how Porter’s town hall meeting went when members of the Republican Party arrived. They started fights. Intimidating, threatening, and assaulting members of the opposing party who were present to engage in American democracy.
All across this country, Republicans and conservatives at large have been attacking democracy both systematically and extra-judicially. It didn’t start on January 6th, but that is the most visible example of their violent attitudes toward deliberation and peace. Their language is violence, their chosen method of communication is through threat and injury, and their actions are the legal equivalent of running a sword through the heart of democracy. They attack the right to vote, they attack the voters themselves, they attack the opposition with lies. They politicize public health, they demonize public education, they write their own version of American history, they assault the symbol of American democracy in the Capital City. They’re confrontational, egotistical, obtuse to facts, willfully ignorant, and openly violent. Their leaders openly obstruct the majority elected by a majority of the American people, and the justices who claim their ideology openly change and challenge the law as they see fit.
President Joe Biden believes they can be reasoned with, that we should allow them to work as normal and that voting is the only solution to the question of Republican extremism. While it’s true that voting is the only peaceful solution, when the vote is under assault because Republicans know that it’s the only peaceful solution, it’s time to start thinking of creating more peaceful solutions.
The Filibuster or The United States
It’s not an exaggeration to say that the filibuster exists in a space that is mythically white supremacist in its origin. So many beliefs about its origin have come about because white Americans can’t come to terms with the fact that we have a racist history in this country, despite the fact that John C. Calhoun invented the idea of a filibuster to preserve the ability of a shrinking minority of pro-slavery and anti-civil rights cohort in the U.S. Senate to block all bills that could help non-white Americans establish a foothold of power. Joe Biden was in the Senate for three decades before becoming Vice President and then President, so he is well aware of the filibuster. He should be well aware of the filibuster’s use as an anti-civil rights tool, but “tradition and loyalty” could be the names of the lapels on Biden’s suit and it wouldn’t be out of place. Vice President Kamala Harris railed against the filibuster on the campaign trail in 2019 when she was still running in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, but has been quiet on the issue since and unquestioned by political media in D.C. The clearest opponents to eliminating the filibuster, an action endorsed by every single wing of the Democratic Party, have been Republicans en masse and three Democratic Senators who can’t seem to smell the fire burning beneath their feet.
There is no fixing the vote without eliminating the filibuster. They are mutually exclusive. Senator Elizabeth Warren has been banging this particular drum since 2017. Moderates like Jim Clyburn, a voting rights icon and titan of Southern politics in his own right, and Amy Klobuchar have joined the clamor for reform if no elimination can be reached. Texas Democrats have fled their state in political exile to preserve the right of their constituents to vote. Stacey Abrams has been hard at work trying to preserve Georgia as a viable victory for Democrats. Democrats at all levels are sounding alarms as the other side gets more and more frenzied.
Ohio Republicans are again hijacking their process to render Ohio unwinnable for Democrats. Michigan, Florida, and Arizona Republicans are doing the same thing. Dixie Alley Republicans are diving off the deep end into conspiracy theories. California Republicans are dying out, and with their last breath are attempting to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. Minnesota and Oregon Republicans are openly sharing white supremacist literature. Alaska Republicans are endorsing a challenger to their Republican Senator for not being down for the cause enough. Many Republican elected officials find themselves in a race to the bottom to appeal to their increasingly violent base. Families and friends are being torn apart as more and more conservatives find themselves sucked into vortexes of conspiracies and lies, pushing them to new depths of anger and hatred, fueled by a fear that needs to stay burning for those who seek power to achieve and keep it.
When put in these stark terms, it simultaneously becomes easy to see how the filibuster becomes a unifying issue for Democrats eager to avoid actual bloodshed and difficult to see how the filibuster could be supported by any sensible member of elected leadership. The Republican Party, which controls half of Congress, is in a public and obvious downward spiral into open authoritarianism and there are members of the Democratic Party in high-level positions of government who believe that the GOP will simply come to their senses when presented with a crisp, cogent argument for freedom. This is not the case. Sound logic isn’t enough.
Policy isn’t enough.
When I fell in love with Elizabeth Warren’s message in 2019, I thought that I would have been able to convince those around me that her policies were sound, and that her ideas were enough to win. I thought that I could convince all the people who were moving from the GOP like I did that she was the one to follow.
The problem is that we can’t rely on having the answers. Our answers and solutions don’t matter anymore. No one cares that you have a plan that can pay for “x” or that will offer a new solution or perspective on “y.” You can put forward a plan to solve global conflict, hunger, climate crises, and give everyone a puppy and it won’t matter because the other side is hell-bent on killing our side. It’s not about politics for them anymore. For the right, politics is an expression of their entitlement and the identity that comes with that entitlement. The right to vote doesn’t matter because they want to wipe out anyone who won’t vote for them. The freedoms of religion and speech don’t matter anymore because they’re going to make sure everyone believes and speaks as they do. We will enter a system of enforced conservatism. One nation, under their god. No plan or policy in the world will save us from that.
I’m not even convinced at this point that the voting rights bill and the For The People Act will solve the problem. The law only exists as far as it is able to be enforced, and at some point there will be a state or politician that will brazenly disregard the law and there will be a judge who will uphold their disregard and we’re back to square one. The effort is what matters, and trying to solve this peacefully is commendable at this, the eleventh hour for American democracy. But make no mistake that there are people and politicians who will not care at all that these laws will exist, should they pass, and that there are judges who will give them legal legitimacy in their challenges.
We have one chance to peacefully save democracy in the United States, and it begins with eliminating the filibuster. It’s our last, best chance to legally nip these challengers to our society in the bud. After that, their actions will determine the next course of action for us.
Throwing Away Our Shot
If we fail to take this shot, or if we fail to deliver it properly, then make no mistake that this cannot and should not end peacefully.
There is, of course, the possibility that even if we hit this shot and pass the laws that it will not end peacefully. There is no guarantee of success, even after the President’s signature is on the line. Even if we win a majority of votes and have the elections certified, they may still attempt to thwart seating Democrats. They will come again with their guns and their trucks and their flags. They will holler and swear and attempt again to tear from the ground the roots of American democracy and burn them for kindling. The radical right is unrelenting in their pursuit of power, and it is unrealistic to think that the law or that reason can stop them. There is only one way to stop them, and that is with blood and iron.
The only way that we can end this pestilence of authoritarianism in the United States is to so forcefully eradicate it from the realm of acceptability in our discourse by any means necessary, that it becomes dangerous for anyone in our society to even consider for a moment taking the rights of the people to vote, regardless of who those people may be. Our actions against the radical right and their bloodthirsty agenda to demolish American democracy and the rights of millions for their own gain and comfort must be so final, so absolutely brutal, that they become a mortal deterrent for anyone who would consider taking these steps again.
The right to vote in this country must be held sacred for all Americans. It must be the absolute right of all citizens, and it must be defended just as absolutely, with the sweat of poll workers and volunteers, with the tears of activists and leaders, and if necessary with the blood of patriots who will not see the rights of themselves, their children, or their neighbors to determine the course of this nation stolen by a violent minority who cannot accept that their ideas have lost their grip on an evolving society.
If our efforts fail, and if the conservative minority continues down their path of violence, then we will have no choice but to meet them there in the fields of blood. This is not a battle we have chosen, it is not the way we have wanted to see our problems solved, and we have taken careful steps to avoid this outcome. Yet, despite our best efforts to find a path forward in peace, we have been met with violence. Despite our efforts to solve problems with policy, ideas, and words, we have been met with malice and willful ignorance of the facts. Despite our pleas to see reason and to avoid the conflict barreling toward us, we have been thrust into the fight for our very way of life, and for the hope that it could get better if we work at it peacefully.
This was not how we were intended to maintain democracy, but it may be the only way to save it. The time for speeches is over. The hope for compromise is gone. The end of America is nigh, and we must refuse to let it go without a real and honest fight to preserve it by any means necessary.