You Will Never Get Your Country Back

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/you-will-never-get-your-country-back_us_59373e52e4b06bff911d7be5


I have spent much of my time writing for this publication talking about how complicated our politics are. Talking about the dangers of failing to acknowledge our complicated history and the need to be honest and open about how to move our country forward.

My need to bridge the divide is a product of having spent my entire life trying to see both sides of the argument. Trying to not fall into the trap of absolutes. Refusing to accept that the world we live in exists only in black and white. Doing my best to show my country that we could be more than the very things that separate us. At some point, enough is enough though. At some point, I can’t be a consensus builder. At some point, even I run out of excuses and explanations for people who can’t even be honest with themselves.

I’m a black man in America with graduate degrees on top of graduate degrees. I feel just as comfortable at a country concert as I do at a rap concert. My friends look like the big box of crayons and my family looks like the United Nations. I am the walking embodiment of this country’s progress, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by silently and watch us go backwards. The costs are too high.

To the supporters and enablers of President Trump: please read carefully, because I don’t want you to miss a single word. You will never get your country back because it was never yours to have in the first place. America doesn’t belong to any one person. It belongs to Muslims in Detroit, Christians in Lubbock, Jews in New York City, and atheists in Los Angeles.

America belongs to Republicans just as much as America belongs to Democrats.That’s how these UNITED States work. To the uninformed and incompetent former mayor from Alaska, the knuckle-dragging bigot masquerading as a special advisor, and the race-baiting failure of a president that currently have the loudest voices in the Republican Party, you do not have a monopoly on this great country. You never will.

What’s ironic is that my family has been here a lot longer than many of the same people who claim to serve the “real America.” When did your family arrive here, Mr. President? I can trace my family lineage back to our nation’s original sin, but I still love this country more and more each day. In spite of its flaws, I love this country. In spite of the inequality and pockmarks, I love this country. In spite of all those that question my place in this country, I still love this country. This is just as much my country as anyone else’s. I still get goosebumps when the national anthem plays before football games and I still tear up when I hear stories of bravery and valor from our troops.

(And in case there was any confusion, our military isn’t some monolithic group of made up individuals that disappear as soon as we take our hand off of our hearts, it’s made up of real Americans of all races, religions, and beliefs. It’s made up of us.)

It’s easy to wave a flag in the air and call yourself a patriot. It’s easy to put a bumper sticker on your truck. It’s easy to put your hand over your heart and pledge allegiance, but that no more makes you an American than putting on a football helmet makes me Tom Brady. You have to earn it. You have to put in the work.

America is more than just a catchphrase or a collection of colors on a piece of cloth. America means liberty. America means freedom. Being American isn’t just a political term, it’s a way of life. It would serve many enablers and supporters of our President to stop going through the motions of calling themselves an American and ask themselves what it means to actually be an American. I think the term for that is personal responsibility. The time for party politics is over. Your nation, my nation, our nation is under attack. Not just from a foreign entity, but a domestic one as well.

Standing by this president makes you an embarrassment to all that is good in this country. It makes you a stain on the fabric of our nation. It makes you the antithesis of everything that your party purports to stand for. Simply put, it makes you un-American.


Michael Starr Hopkins , Contributor
Democratic Strategist & Attorney

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Nobody that approved of obamacaid gives a damn about liberty or freedom. So forget that bs.

What leftists mean by "country" is newspeak for govt. And if possible a borderless global govt.

Sooo... nice try i guess... but that's the biggest load of horse shit I've seen in a while.

PkrBum wrote:Nobody that approved of obamacaid gives a damn about liberty or freedom. So forget that bs.

What leftists mean by "country" is newspeak for govt. And if possible a borderless global govt.

Sooo... nice try i guess... but that's the biggest load of horse shit I've seen in a while.

And now it's time for you to take your hateful self for a very long walk off a short ocean pier. The sooner the better.

PkrBum wrote:Nobody that approved of obamacaid gives a damn about liberty or freedom. So forget that bs.

What leftists mean by "country" is newspeak for govt. And if possible a borderless global govt.

Sooo... nice try i guess... but that's the biggest load of horse shit I've seen in a while.

mmm

Prkbum is 100% trump right. It's right there in the Constitution. Only right-wing Republicans get to decide who and what is American. Thank you Jesus for writing the Constitution real plane where everybody can understand it. I bet Parkbomb has a American flag flying in his front yard and it's bigger than what the neighborhood association allows... WHY? MERICA THATS WHY! He's a Gall dang by God American.

polecat wrote:

PkrBum wrote:Nobody that approved of obamacaid gives a damn about liberty or freedom. So forget that bs.

What leftists mean by "country" is newspeak for govt. And if possible a borderless global govt.

Sooo... nice try i guess... but that's the biggest load of horse shit I've seen in a while.

mmm

Prkbum is 100% trump right. It's right there in the Constitution. Only right-wing Republicans get to decide who and what is American. Thank you Jesus for writing the Constitution real plane where everybody can understand it. I bet Parkbomb has a American flag flying in his front yard and it's bigger than what the neighborhood association allows... WHY? MERICA THATS WHY! He's a Gall dang by God American.

Sooo... Trump is responsible for this too? Caution... leftists should close their eyes when reading this.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/opinion/the-democratic-party-is-in-worse-shape-than-you-thought.html

Sifting through the wreckage of the 2016 election, Democratic pollsters, strategists and sympathetic academics have reached some unnerving conclusions.

What the autopsy reveals is that Democratic losses among working class voters were not limited to whites; that crucial constituencies within the party see its leaders as alien; and that unity over economic populism may not be able to turn back the conservative tide.

Equally disturbing, winning back former party loyalists who switched to Trump will be tough: these white voters’ views on immigration and race are in direct conflict with fundamental Democratic tenets.

Some of these post-mortem conclusions are based on polling and focus groups conducted by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA; others are drawn from a collection of 13 essays published by The American Prospect.

A consistent theme is that the focus on white defections from the Democratic Party masks an even more threatening trend: declining turnout among key elements of the so-called Rising American Electorate — minority, young and single voters. Turnout among African-Americans, for example, fell by 7 points, from 66.6 percent in 2012 to 59.6 percent in 2016.

Priorities USA, in surveys and focus groups, studied “drop off voters,” those who lean Democratic but failed to vote in either 2014 or 2016. By and large, these voters were members of the coalition that elected and re-elected Barack Obama:

people of color (41% African-American, Hispanic, or Asian), young (22% under the age of 29), female (60%), and unmarried (46% single, separated, widowed, or divorced).

Priorities found that drop off voters were distinctly lukewarm toward Hillary Clinton:

Just 30% describe themselves as very favorable to Clinton, far lower than the 72% who describe themselves as very favorable to Barack Obama.

Priorities also studied Obama-to-Trump voters. Estimates of the number of such voters range from 6.7 to 9.2 million, far more than enough to provide Trump his Electoral College victory. The counties that switched from Obama to Trump were heavily concentrated in the Midwest and other Rust Belt states.

To say that this constituency does not look favorably on the Democratic Party fails to capture the scope of their disenchantment.

The accompanying chart illustrates this discontent. A solid majority, 77 percent, of Obama-to-Trump voters think Trump’s economic policies will either favor “all groups equally” (44) or the middle class (33). 21 percent said Trump would favor the wealthy.

In contrast, a plurality of these voters, 42 percent, said that Congressional Democrats would favor the wealthy, slightly ahead of Congressional Republicans at 40 percent.

Perfectly stated Michael Starr Hopkins!

Need a job? Are you a liar? A plagiarist? Accused of spousal abuse? Maybe you've got a soft spot for Nazis? If so, opportunities await!