Pity The Nation
When all of the wrong people are in charge, what can the rest of us do?
Hey, baby, it’s the 4th of July.
Every year on this day, I usually share the song by the band X all over my socials because the chorus is my all-day earworm.
But not this year.
Instead, I have a different July-based earworm thanks to Portland band The Decemberists, because July never seemed so strange as it does right now.
The traitors in the MAGA Congress passed convicted felon adjudicated rapist Epstein Bestie Donald Trump’s fully evil Big Bullshit Bill yesterday, so it feels like there’s really not a whole lot for us to celebrate today.
His MAGA cult is celebrating the “win” when they have no idea how hard the Medicaid and SNAP cuts are going to hit them. Red State residents who’ve enjoyed the socialism that Blue States have provided for them FOREVER are going to find out first, and they’re not going to like it.
Personally, I don’t want ANYONE to die because of Trump. Not even the ones who voted for him. NO ONE.
So instead of sharing music, which is something I adore doing, I’m sharing this poem, because this is how we got here.
“PITY THE NATION”
Lawrence Ferlinghetti (After Khalil Gibran) 2007
Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
And whose bigots haunt the airwaves
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
Except to praise conquerors
And acclaim the bully as hero
And aims to rule the world
By force and by torture
Pity the nation that knows
No other language but its own
And no other culture but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
And sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation oh pity the people
who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty!
It would hit a lot harder if there were such a thing as a MAGAt with a conscience. Or a MAGAt who reads. Or a MAGAt who cares about the INDEFINITE DETENTION OF CHILDREN because those children will be brown.
OF. CHILDREN.
I encourage you to keep that screenshot to share with every MAGA Republican using their social media to wish people a Happy 4th of July. I know they don’t care, but publicly shaming them might make you feel a tiny bit better.
It’s unlikely we’ll see a TACO moment today, even though Trump said two months ago that he’d veto any bill that slashed Medicaid.
Trump also said the other day that he didn’t know this Big Bullshit Bill slashes Medicaid, because no one told him ahead of time and also because there’s no way he read any of the bill just like most of the MAGA Congress didn’t read it.
Nice going, MAGA.
Who cares what’s in a bill, right? Why bother reading it to see if it’s going to hurt the people who elected them? JK, they also don’t care about protecting the people who elected them.
Spoiler: Still-At-Large Marge voted for it anyway because she’s hoping Trump will remember how he promised her a pardon, but he won’t and never will.
Plenty of Republicans who bitched about the Big Bullshit Bill voted for it because they’re scared of Trump writing a mean Truth Social post about them.
Scared of a tiny pathetic coward who’s been afraid of some lady on Twitter for nearly a decade.
Scared of a traitor who’s been owned by Putin since 1987.
Scared of a rapist who still owes E. Jean Carroll nearly $100 million.
Scared of a pedophile who raped little girls procured for him by his best friend of 25 years, Jeffrey Epstein.
Another earworm that popped up while writing this:
Where do we go from here
Now that all other children are growin' up?
And how do we spend our lives
If there's no one to lend us a hand?
…And how do we spend our time
Knowing nobody gives us a damn?
However, we can also take a note (literally) from The Alan Parsons Project thanks to this couplet later in the song:
Ain't gonna spend the rest of my life
Quietly fading away, yeah
So, where DO we go from here? The biggest complaint I heard over and over while Kamala Harris was campaigning is that the Democrats don’t have a defining message. I have one for them now, and I want you to help me get it to all of them and then make it stick.
We use the Big Bullshit Bill against the GOP every chance we get between now and November 3, 2026. We pin every complaint on them. We use their own words against them. Remember how the Republicans framed their attack on Obamacare and kept saying they were going to “repeal and replace” it? You know, in two weeks?
Democrats MUST co-opt that talking point. Democrats should hammer it on the daily: “Democrats will REPEAL AND REPLACE Trump’s Big Bullshit Bill and restore all of the benefits they took away from the American people.”
Using the MAGA cult’s words against them is the best possible tactic to fight them. Democrats were handed a gift when Republicans publicly stumped for the Big Bullshit Bill. We have HOURS of footage to use against them in campaign ads.
That’s it. That’s the message. That’s the assignment.