January 20, 2025.

I’m trying to stay away from my lizard brain today, unlike the rage I surrendered to on Election Day. I’m trying to not focus on how Donald Trump used his first address as our 47th president to crap on Native Americans (Denali will not be renamed Mt. McKinley) and further marginalize trans Americans (although I did say a small prayer that Barron Trump is transgender). I’m not focusing on how the CBP One app, created so asylum seekers can enter this country legally, has already been shut down by Trump officials. I’m not going to talk about how Trump’s inauguration, surrounded by, not the red hat MAGA supporters but his Billionaire Bros, is the dawn of a new Dark Ages.

This is Martin Luther King Jr. Day so the focus is on the work. We are entering an age of disinformation that will require extra effort from us to do what we have done successfully in the past, organize. Trump’s ultra-wealthy handlers, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and the rest, will work to divide us and deflate our hope. Trump will give more tax breaks to the gilded class while the people who voted for him continue to suffer with lack of adequate health care coverage. They may be the newest recruits to the much chided “woke left.”

The work will require radical honesty about how Democrats have failed working class people, including new immigrants and queer people. The work will require radical honesty about how the “mainstream media” is the corporate media. The work will require radical honesty about how Neo-liberal economic policies have torn apart the safety and security of unionized labor in this country. And the work will require that the opposition party put up candidates in 2026 that will fight, without capitulation, for the issues real Americans face, including health care for all.

Most importantly, this work is going to require us to get off our phones and organize. And some of that organizing is going to be uncomfortable. Farm owners, who rely on undocumented workers, should be at the table. So should law enforcement officers and other first responders, who are as much a part of the service economy as baristas and vegan restaurant servers. Evangelicals, who recognize Christ’s attention to the poor and marginalized, can also be reached out to as well. Instead of falling into our little gangs of angry Americans, it’s time to build a massive coalition to save America from the broligarchy that Trump welcomed into our nation’s Capitol. We are a people who, at our core, value diversity, equity, and inclusion of our neighbors. We can control the narrative not him.

To date, Americans have spent 10 trillion dollars on the War on Terror, that replaced the Taliban in Afghanistan with the Taliban and enriched a lot of companies doing business with the Pentagon. We can debate if that price tag is required to keep the nation safe from 9/11-type attacks, but I’m betting that $10 trillion could have made our nation safe in other ways, including free health care and affordable housing for all Americans. These are things that affect all of us, including the millions of Americans who voted for Trump. Before Americans are completely overwhelmed by the chaos of the pathological liar in the White House and drugged with disinformation, coming from Chinese apps, Musk, Meta, and elsewhere, let’s reach out with reason. We have one last window. There are 650 days until the mid-term elections. Breathe today and work tomorrow.