Now we have an opportunity to bring Americans together, to embrace a collective and inclusive “us,” and to repudiate hate and “othering” as a political strategy.
President Biden was right about the GOP’s threat to democracy, and it is intrinsic to the American story. But, as Kamala Harris and Tim Walz know, freedom is a word that rings deeply in our psyches and has since the American Revolution.
Although moving-toward-pleasure strategies don’t always produce immediate changes in behavior like moving-away-from-pain strategies do, they can last far longer and be far more powerful if properly reinforced.
It’s been around 70 years since the McCarthy era. And most Americans today have no direct memory of its excesses and the damage done, both to families targeted and to Americans’ trust in our institutions of government.
There are many lessons to be learned from this year’s election. The main one right now, though, is that because the RNC failed three times to protect America from a dictatorial madman that job now falls to us.
“Look at my entire Deep State target list,” Ivan Raiklin said. “That is the beginning. This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”
From the founding of our republic, protecting the power of the press to call out anti-democratic behavior has been a firewall, protecting our form of government. It is their job.