Today, the Washington Post ran a long, luxurious backrub of a story about a hard-right conservative Romney supporter. The woman in question, upon confronting the evidence offered by the election that gay people are people, rape is rape and Fox News doesn’t tell the truth, feels that the country is lost.
I agree with the sentiment, but for different reasons. The woman in the Post story believes the country lost everything last Tuesday. I believe we didn’t win very much. We both think America has lost its way. The America she voted for is gone, filed in the dustbin of history and demographics and the inevitable tide of expanding rights. The America I voted for is gone, too, cast aside in a 21st century bent on expanding the rights of corporations while making sure the president can legally have a kill list without anyone arresting him for murder.
She mourns an America that will never return. The America I mourn is not lost forever, not yet, and I mean to do something about that. I intend to spend the next four years jumping up and down on every elected official within reach to see that the horrid contra-constitutional excesses of the last 12 years are put right. In the article I wrote after the election, I concluded by saying, “All we won on Tuesday night was the outside chance of not losing. What is made of that very slim margin is entirely up to you.”
Truthout has not bought into the fantasy that everything is okay now; far from it. We need your help to continue this struggle. Please make a tax-deductible contribution now.
Click here to donate.
(Truthout is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. EIN: 20-0031641)
You can also donate by check, made payable to:
Truthout, P.O. Box 276414, Sacramento, CA 95827
(Please include your email address on your check.)
Yours,
William Rivers Pitt, Columnist and Editor
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.