Caffeinated Politics

When we explained in 2024 to our family and friends why it was dangerously wrong to cast a ballot for an authoritarian candidate running for president, there was a range of feedback. Reasoned people grasped the larger issues on the ballot, such as character, the foundation, and values of our nation. Others openly rejected facts and perspectives about everything from the economic folly of tariffs and what it said about a candidate who would ask his supporters to not only believe but to further the bald-faced lie of immigrants eating neighborhood pets.

This week, the nation is watching as Donald Trump verbally maligned a dead woman, killed by bullets from an ICE employee, and rejected facts to further his rancid behavior towards Brown people in our society. I have worked in politics and campaigns at one level or another for over 40 years. I have knocked on doors and discussed issues of the day, from local assembly races to Middle East policy. I am accustomed to discussing various points on any topic. However, I have never had to address the morality or goodness of character when I did lit drops or went out to knock on someone’s door for a get-out-the-vote effort.

I never thought anyone was less than decent. Less American, less caring, or less honorable than any other voter I was trying to convince about the issues of the day. Over the past several years, I can no longer say that thing.

That is truly and deeply sad.

In our nation, we have a growing number of people who support the very things most of us were taught to reject and stay away from when we were youngsters. Those things we were brought up to repudiate are openly and willfully embraced by people we thought we once knew, or once worked with, or once considered worthy of our respect.

The shooting in Minneapolis is a test. It is a reminder that we are not all on the same page of decency or humanity. This is simply a severe dividing line that we cannot dismiss as just another news story.