I'll start with denying the Trumpist their #1 desire, asking folks to bring flowers to the Mall in DC. I'll finish with a new way to look at one of the great speeches -- greatest three paragraphs -- in the English language, and I will ask you to imagine they are being said to you right now.
==Handing America's enemies a gift, with a ribbon and a bow ==
Get word out. They want protestors at Trump's hijacking of the DC July 4th celebration! They want disruptions. They want lefties burning flags and spitting at veterans and service members, who have been drifting OUT of the Republican Party because of... well... facts. And Putin and treason and trumpist craziness. America's enemies want and need the fringe to do really stupid things. It's the one way to prevent losing every intelligent 'deep state' person and members of every fact-using profession. Alas, there are passionate 'antifas' who will happily oblige.
Oh, there are plenty of times/places for antifa! But choose to follow leaders with some brains, will you? Like Bernie or LIz or Julian or Obama. Alas, in contrast take the brave but oh-my Colin Kaepernick. Full of the praise he got for a kneeling protest that could have achieved so much more with some nuance. Now he's commanding that no proper thinking person in America would ever display or respect the nation's revolutionary war flag ... and thus he and his reflex followers have handed to the mad, treasonous right yet another symbol of patriotism they get to (undeservedly) call their own.
When the symbols should be ours! That revolution mattered.
Yeah, yeah, that huge but imperfect/incomplete revolution against the royal oligarchy had to be corrected by an imperfect/incomplete Jacksonian revolt by small farmers... who were themselves oppressor bastards, requiring another imperfect/incomplete fight in which half a million brave folks in blue fought and died to end slavery... incompletely and imperfectly. And our imperfect/incomplete revolution had setbacks in the 1870s and 1920s phases of this ongoing civil war, when the stark-outright-evil confederacy grabbed a whole lot of symbols and made everyone kneel before their Ku Klux 'lost cause.' But then came the Roosevelts, and wonderful imperfect/incomplete things got done. Then MLK and more great imperfect/incomplete progress....
And yes, we're still shitty assholes compared to the Star Trek future! A future that only we ever started to bring about. That only we ever envisioned through science fiction and that you demand for our children.
What we aren't is shitty assholes compared to every nation and tribe that ever existed before us, or those trying now to bring us down. Compared to them, we are fucking saints who gave humanity its best 80 years, ever.
I want that future of Star Trekkian justice, diversity, tolerance, flattened authority and all those good things. I want it probably more than you do, so don't you dare accuse me of being a tepid moderate.
I am a goddamn militant moderate! And I will not stand by while our own side's ninnies hand over every symbol and patriotic feeling to be exploited against us by Hannity and Fox and the confederates who conspire with Putin's KGB and mafiosi and Saudi prices and casino moguls and Wall Street cheaters to bring us down.
Get out there and love the flag, for all the imperfect/incompletion of the imperfect/incomplete promise it hasn't yet kept! Demand the nation move ahead! But you'll defeat the enemies of that great project better under that flag than you will if you simply hand it over to its destroyers, to use as they will.
If you are heading into DC to protest, take armsful, bushels of flowers. Hand one to every veteran or soldier you meet. You will do more good than a thousand screams and shouts.
And now, a fey moment that will give you chills and gird you for the fight.
==He's talking to you ==
Something to try. Take a minute. Read Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - only envision he’s talking to you, right now.
About us, right now.
It’s shockingly pertinent. "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure."
Amen. He’s talking to you, this very moment, about this very moment. And every word is true, right now. Every word, right now. We are struggling against real enemies of this great experiment, to ensure "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." ...
Moreover, if you can feel the power of the Great Emancipator pouring through you, read it aloud to that teetering RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican) you know. It's brief, potent - so recite it on the 4th.
And tell your RASR that yes, this is how we feel. And he needs to choose which side he is on, in this potentially lethal phase of our endless Civil War.
Make no mistake. Our enemies’ aim is the same as always -- as Putin made clear when he laughed and told his puppet that the great "liberal experiment" was obsolete. He doesn't mince words. His axis of Kremlin-KGB agents, oligarchs, Saudi princes, casino moguls, carbon barons, mafiosi, Wall Street cheaters, communist despots, Fox liars and inheritance brats...
...they plan nothing less than to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall perish from the earth.
