Time to take the Red Pill, part 2/5

More and more Americans are waking to reality. Time to welcome them over to a big tent GOP focused on isolating and defeating the insane authoritarianism of Wokeism.

Picking Up Where We Left Off

My previous post started a brief series on red pilling.  The basic idea is simple: Most of us were handed a political identity as children.  We stuck with it until something caused us to question it.  The “red pill” is a metaphoric awakening.  It was what we popped when we began questioning.

My last post was an impassioned Cri de Coeur I penned towards the end of 2002.  My disillusionment with what I saw as the trajectory of the Democratic Party was only part of the equation.  I didn’t drop my affiliation to become an independent until 2005.  I didn’t register as a Republican (other than briefly, to vote in a primary) until 2010.  I didn’t really become fully comfortable with the GOP until 2015 or so.  Red pilling is a process.  Here are some other noteworthy items I jotted along the way.

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From June 2005

I found this one, dated June 17, 2015.  It came during a period in which I was active in what was—at the time—a chat space for non-radical Democrats, Talking Points Memo or TPM Café.

The Candidate We Deserved

Joshua Michael Marshall found some polls that led him to wonder whether Kerry could win a “do over” election held today.  I saw an opportunity to continue expressing my distaste for the direction that the Democratic Party has taken since Bill Clinton handed the baton to Al Gore.

Can we do over the primaries while we’re at it?

I spent time volunteering for the Kerry campaign, but I never for a moment believed that he would be a good President.  When a Republican friend commented that she believed that Kerry would be a disaster, I could reply only that it was possible to be both a disaster and an improvement.

Kerry did not deserve to win that election.  He ran a campaign premised entirely upon the idea that Bush deserved to lose.  An additional eight months worth of data might have convinced a few more voters that he was right--but he still wouldn’t have deserved to win and he still wouldn’t make an effective President.

The Democratic Party went into the primary season with one goal in mind: Don’t offend anyone who already dislikes Bush.  We got the milquetoast candidate we deserved--a Senator with a long and undistinguished career.  Until we’re prepared to do better, we don’t deserve a do over.

I volunteered for the Kerry campaign, even though I wasn’t certain that I was working for the right guy.  Were a do-over held tomorrow, I still wouldn’t be sure.

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From September 2005

By September 2005, I was well into my “pox on both their houses” phase.  It was also a period that I thought that people gave a damn what I might have to say about prominent MSM columnists.  From September 10, 2005:

The Powerful vs. the People

David Ignatius’s column in yesterday’s Washington Post, The Party of Performance, could prove to be something of a watershed.  He asserts that our national political debate may finally be getting beyond the ill-conceived mud-slinging about values and moving into a focus on performance.  Here’s to hoping that he’s right.

I have believed for quite some time that America’s political leadership is much more divided than its people.  As a result, our political leaders have taken it upon themselves to drive wedges throughout the American body politic.  This ploy makes political sense.  After all, a voter petrified of the Republican “other” will vote Democratic without scrutinizing either candidates or positions.  Voters terrified by the Democratic “other” are equally safe Republican votes.  Political leaders capable of scaring enough voters gain maximum flexibility to exploit both their locked-in base and those that they have locked out.  In this context, Howard Dean’s calumny that Republicans have never worked a day in their lives and Karl Rove’s obscenity asserting that liberals believe that bin Laden merely needs a good shrink both demonstrate political savvy.

Had the Democrats really wanted to win the 2004 election, we would have focused on the Bush Administration’s incompetence.  We would have nominated a candidate with a “can do” reputation, and pointed to how much better things worked during the Clinton Administration than during the Bush Administration.  But competence, I was assured, was a hard sell.  So instead we ran around creating ideological differences at every turn, whether they really exist or not.  We fought education over testing rather than funding, abandoned our historical opposition to tyrants and support for human rights, pushed to increase taxes on the wealthy rather than calling for tax simplification, and insisted that social security needs no reform.  Why?  Beacuse Bush talks a good game about testing, human rights, tax simplification, and social security reform.  We seemed to think that the American public is too dumb to notice that Bush’s rhetoric is rarely matched by competence.  In short, Democrats have adopted the divisive Republican strategy of decades past.  At the convention, Bill Clinton explained that they need to divide the country, but we don’t.  While that may be true, we’re certainly not acting as if it is.

Our political leaders have conspired to convince our citizens that they dwell in either the United States of Blue America or the United States of Red America--two increasingly antagonistic countries with divergent and diverging world views.  As Egyptian protesters might shout: Kifaya!  Enough!  There are ideals and ideologies that unite these United States.  It’s time for our leaders to recognize that both parties want to improve education, spread opportunity, promote growth, oppose tyranny, strengthen human rights, and generate an international system commited to liberal values and the role of law.  They differ in priorities and in approach--not in ideology.  The time has come to reunite the Red and Blue states into a debate over competence and performance.

Ignatius points to Newt Gingrich as someone who seems to have learned from his past successes and defeats, and moved on to a different playing field.  Perhaps.  Others might have pointed to Hillary Clinton and drawn the same conclusion.  John McCain and Joe Lieberman invariably pop up in all lists of influential politicians capable of transcending the partisan divide.  It’s time that we--as voters, citizens, and activists--make it clear that these are the people we want as our leaders rather than the sorry bunch we’ve got at the moment.

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There’s more to come.  As I mentioned, red pilling is a process.  Mine was.  If you went through one, I suspect that yours was, too.  Most importantly, if you know people going through the process now, please share these columns.  It’s critical that they know that they’re not alone.

To be continued…

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For more information about Bruce D. Abramson & American Restorationism, visit: www.BruceDAbramson.com

To learn more about how America’s elites destroyed the republic, see:  The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America (RealClear Publishing, 2021).

To learn more about the ideology driving today’s anti-American leftism, see: American Restoration: Winning America’s Second Civil War (Kindle, 2019).

To learn more about our work at the American Coalition for Education and Knowledge, visit us at https://coalition4america.com/.

To learn more about how I turn the ideas I discuss here into concrete projects that serve the interests of my clients, donors, and society at large, please e-mail me at bdabramson@pm.me.