Sadly, this Fourth of July holiday could be the last one that means anything—unless your idea of freedom involves flag-humping jingoism, the white-hot hatred of immigrants, and singing perpetual hosannas to an unaccountable criminal strongman with the gimlet-eyed wisdom of olive loaf.
Donald Trump has telegraphed his authoritarian intentions over and over again, and his plans are truly frightening.
We’ve all seen the gruesome litany: Project 2025, Trump’s ghastly Time magazine interview, his near-promise to persecute his political enemies—including, perhaps, having a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff executed. Then there’s the whole fawning-over-murderous-dictators shtick—including his reported assertion that “Hitler did some good things.” (Which is a little like going to a weekend barbecue and telling everyone they need to try Jeffrey Dahmer’s proprietary dry rub. No, really, it’s a lot better than you’d think! He did some good things, cayenne-wise and from the standpoint of paprika.)
So with all that in mind, it’s no wonder so many of us have found ourselves in a semi-permanent fight-or-flight mode over the past eight-plus years—and particularly during the last several months. I know I have. And I also know how enervating the constant worry-and-rage cycle can be. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted. And I assume many of you are, too.
Which is why, several weeks ago, after obsessing over yet another concern-trolling column on President Joe Biden’s maddening inability to walk on water or cast the demons out of Peter Doocy, I decided to get off my ass and do something. Or, rather, stay on my ass and do something. Because while I want to save democracy as much as—or even more than—anyone else, staying on my ass is a nonnegotiable part of the strategy.
And I’m in luck! There’s a perfect, pretested action plan for people like me, and you need look no further than this link. All the deets are there, but the gist is this: A small army of volunteers—hundreds of thousands of us!—has signed up with the Progressive Turnout Project’s Postcards to Swing States Initiative, which is partnering with Daily Kos. It’s pretty much what it sounds like. We mail postcards to states where Biden is either uncomfortably ahead or within shouting distance of the ocher arschloch, and if we’re successful, we’ll help give Joe the margins he needs to stay in office and keep the fascists at bay.
And it’s super easy. Cookie-cutter, even. Effective, proven, brief messages are provided for you (the states may be purple, but the prose most definitely is not), and you need only copy them down, add the addresses from the voter list provided (they’re all “voters who are extremely likely to support Democratic candidates but might not vote without a nudge,” according to the PTP), and voilà—democracy is saved! Or could be, anyway, if enough of us participate in this and similar get-out-the-vote efforts.
It’s as simple as that. No fretting, no raging, no hair-pulling. Just easy, direct, proven action that can make a real difference, and perhaps save your fingernails from the perduring depredations of Trump-induced angst.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with worrying. If excessive worrying somehow made you a defective person, I’d have been tossed in the factory-irregular bargain bin long ago.
Worry is a natural human reaction to perceived threats—especially imagined future threats, like a feral orange ogre turning the White House into a fascist Taco Bell Express. It’s an integral part of our psychology, and serves an evolutionary purpose—to protect us from potential dangers. But our hunter-gatherer brains—which evolved to allow us to adapt to preindustrial environments—have a tendency to go into overdrive these days, creating lots of fruitless worry. As Mark Twain famously said, “I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”
In other words, worrying is fine—worrying is natural—but it’s not meant to be a feeling we wallow in. It tells us we need to prepare for the worst, even as we hope for the best.
And the way to do that is through action—preferably concerted action. In that sense, the Postcards to Swing States campaign has been a godsend. I’m as introverted as they come, and so canvassing, phone-banking, and other human-adjacent GOTV efforts have always been outside my comfort zone. But the postcards campaign feels tailor-made for me. It’s something I can comfortably do—and so I’m actually doing it.
While I’m not much for clubs, joining clubs, going to club meetings, or anything tangentially connected to clubs, there’s something invigorating—and empowering—about being part of a greater whole that’s collectively making a difference.
And these efforts do make a difference. As the Progressive Turnout Project notes, “Our award-winning research proves that postcards increase Democratic turnout by 1.3%. In 2020, our postcard program added thousands of votes in states critical to President Biden’s victory. In the 2022 midterms, our postcards added 22,500 votes in key races across the nation.” And while a 1.3% boost in turnout might not sound that big, in a close election it could literally be the difference between winning and losing. And like the past two presidential elections, this one could be very close.
Luckily, slowly but surely pushing our fortunes in a positive direction has helped me transform my worry into hope in the midst of all this uncertainty. And while it hasn’t stopped me from worrying, it’s certainly prompted me to worry less.
And that’s the main takeaway. “Do more, worry less” is the mantra Hopium Chronicles’ Simon Rosenberg has adopted for his expansive boost-Biden campaign, and it’s one we can all fall back on as we face an uncertain future.
In short, we should all rally around the words of Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden reelection campaign, who was recently interviewed in Puck:
Can I just add one thing? We are going to win. But it is because the people of this country take action and take action now. For every single person who is worried, go do something about it. Get a yard sign. Go on Facebook and say you support Joe Biden. Go do your own fucking TikToks. That is what we need now. … And every single person that’s bed-wetting—hate to use that phrase, thanks for putting it back in my head—take action. Do something. You have power. Take it.
We can all pitch in—assuming we want to continue living in a constitutional liberal democracy—to tilt the odds in our favor. And it won’t just be good for the country; it will be good for our own mental health as well.
Granted, our time is limited—and for many of us, our leisure time is especially precious—but everyone can do something, whether it’s writing postcards; canvassing; phone-banking; writing diaries, blogs, and letters to the editor; donating whatever you can; making friends aware of the enormous stakes of this election; or simply clueing folks in on Joe Biden’s impressive list of accomplishments.
It’s up to us to make the next Fourth of July—and the future holidays of the hundreds of millions of Americans to follow—as fun, fulfilling, and meaningful as ours have traditionally been.
And while we’ll never be anything like the Trump cult, it turns out it is kind of fun to be part of a big, change-making movement—so long as it’s not focused on petty revenge and unwittingly improving the fortunes of venal billionaires.
So what do you say? Let’s do this. Let’s all make a difference—today.
As Mark Twain also said, in reference to our nation’s O.G. holiday, “Baby, you’re a firework … make ‘em go, ‘Oh, oh, oh.’”
Or maybe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson. I could look it up, but these postcards aren’t going to write themselves.
Daily Kos’ Postcards to Swing States campaign is back, and I just signed up to help. Please join me! Let’s do this, patriots! Democracy won’t defend itself.
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