One of the best podcasts I have listened to through most of 2016 has been Jacob Weisberg’s Trumpcast. For those who may not know, Jacob is the head of the Slate Group, which operates Slate Magazine. I have been a member of Slate Plus since its inception and I highly recommend reading Slate and becoming a member. That was the only political action plan I had: listen, donate and call.
This morning, I woke up early because I collapsed while watching Superstore last night at 8:30. I got up and took Max outside and breathed in the cold, fresh air. Then when we came back inside, I spent the next hour organizing all of my old video game systems. And I listened to the Slate Political Gabfest’s election recap. Their special guest was Jacob Weisberg, who has suffered horrendous anti-Semitic attacks throughout this entire year, and tried to put the future into view. He is obviously frustrated and nervous for many of the same reasons that I am, but he basically said we had 48 hours to grieve and then we have to get back on the horse. Although I cannot tell everyone to grieve in the same way, he sparked me to get on the horse, so on this day, I want to create an outline for what I’m going to do and I’m calling it my Political Action Plan.
Post-2016 Political Action Plan
- Contact my local county Democratic Party office and find out what I can do to get involved. No more just sending money or calling from my house. I’m hitting the streets. I recommend you do as well.
- Thank all of my friends and family who have reached out to Brian and I to let us know that we may be worried but they have our backs. I have had more text messages, Facebook messages, and phone calls than I have gotten in the prior 11 months of living in Kentucky.
- Re-up my Slate Plus membership and subscribe to my local paper and the Washington Post, which had the best coverage of this election. Freedom of speech and solid reporting need our support.
- Support refugee organizations (the International Rescue Committee) and Doctors without Borders. Our government may turn their back on the huddled masses yearning for freedom, but we still have wonderful NGOs doing that work in our name.
- Keep the flag I have on my house as this is my America as much as it is anyone else’s.
- Write, write and write. I will finish my novel but I am going to do my best to ensure that everyone is following what this administration does. It will be lobbyist full, Wall Street-centric, and have a foreign policy that tries to ignore the plight of the world. I will also point out every instance where any minority group has been affected. This is not going to be some sort of change Washington election. This will be a heavy handed Republican administration that will try to put in place everything that they have wanted to for years: ending Social Security and Medicare, enacting “religious freedom” laws that back bigotry, growing government payrolls to bring in their cronies, a voting rights plan that will make it much harder for anyone who doesn’t have advantages to get to the polls on Election day, a tax scheme that has no regard for the deficit but cares about how much money the wealthiest and most stock heavy have in their pockets, and an immigration plan that will be fundamentally un-American and racist. I am going to demonstrate anywhere where it is as bad as it seems to be in my head today. And I am going to do my best to make sure it does not just stay within the bounds of my Facebook friends or Twitter followers. My goal is to get my voice to the masses. I named my site Rock the Western World for a reason. It’s time.
- Read, read, and read. I have spent far too much time thinking about or worrying about this election. It’s time to do what I love most. Read comic books, read novels, and read about all of the political bodies I hold dear. Through all of those stories, I may be able to create a new political action plan for the following year.
