Our focus on political threats, and the media’s habit of embracing Republican framing to avoid charges of liberal bias, obscures the fact that America is on the cusp of a new age in which pluralism has triumphed.
Just as diversity is a reality whether the far right likes it or not, the truth has a liberal bias. The concept of different races has no biological basis. Women do not need others to make their reproductive decisions for them. Most people identify as either male or female without public authorities enforcing the gender binary, which only pretends to erase those who do not conform.
With their lives, those who are different echo Galileo’s reported response to Inquisitors who insisted the Earth was motionless at the center of the universe: “But it moves.”
In short, there is room for all of us without a lot of supremacist bullying.
The far right does pose a real threat with its efforts at voter suppression and its plans to refuse to certify election results it doesn’t like. Democrats are duly prepared with armies of lawyers to prevent the theft.
But while we cannot afford to go to sleep, neither should we overreact. We have sufficient power to win if we are prepared to use it. We need not be diverted by the relative few on the far left who are determined to be perpetually outraged and believe (like eccentric third-party candidate Cornel West) that America is the greatest threat to the world.
I don’t mean to suggest that yelling in the street is not activism. It is just ineffective. When pro-Palestinian demonstrators screamed at me on Sixth Avenue after the “Three Presidents” fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall in March, I pointed out that they didn’t know me and were not helping their cause.
Christ said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” They would not be needed if people were not constantly warring with one another. As I write, President Joe Biden is working tirelessly for a ceasefire in the Mideast. Whether he succeeds or not, peace requires participation by both sides. Palestinians must renounce terrorism and recognize the right of Israel to exist, and Israel must abandon annexation and recognize that brutality toward Palestinians only recruits more terrorists. Loudly insisting that everyone who disagrees with you supports genocide may be cathartic, but will neither change American policy nor push the Jews into the sea.
The radicals’ attitude, which is that anything but total agreement with them is a betrayal, is not how the LGBTQ+ community built support for equality. We did it by coming out, organizing, communicating, campaigning and voting. We did it by participating and nurturing relationships, not by holding one another hostage. From Tammy Baldwin to Pete Buttigieg to Malcolm Kenyatta to Sarah McBride to Danica Roem and many others, we are not only in the game—we are in government.
White Christian nationalists are losing their minds because they can see that minorities they have long despised and oppressed are nonetheless thriving.
As with Trump, growing numbers of people are sick of the toxic MAGA nonsense and are standing up to the radical right. If we were ever the country of their selective and self-serving nostalgia, we are no longer. If all of us who are targeted for disenfranchisement stand together, we can overcome the reactionaries. You might say our need to make common cause is screamingly obvious.
What we need is not to take the power of the Democratic coalition for granted, but recognize it and use it effectively.
One of the great strengths of the Democratic ticket in this year’s presidential election is the positive energy of Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. They know how to handle hecklers while sticking to their message.
The Republican nominee, meanwhile, has no discipline and no positive message. He says Harris is of low intelligence. Aside from his unfitness to pass such a judgment, could he say anything less plausible? He is like an unruly child setting off firecrackers to scare people, but none of them go off. Still, it is sobering that he enjoys more support than makes any decent sense.
Shakespeare writes in “Julius Caesar”: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune … And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.”
In this case, an extraordinary woman has taken the current. Our nation is at an inflection point. We have only to take the leap.
