The Message I’m Sending to All Democrats Who Hit Me Up for Money Right Now

Dear Ms./Mr. Democrat:

Before I send donations to any Democrats running during this election cycle, I’m going to request that each candidate do three things for me:

1. Publicly address and take a position on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a christian nationalist takeover of the United States government.

2. Publicly address and take a position on unpacking the corrupted United States Supreme Court, or replacing the three most recently appointed justices. At least three of the sitting justices lied during their confirmation hearings when asked under oath to state their positions on honoring precedent. Several of the justices have taken bribes from billionaires and have been influenced by christian nationalists hellbent on imposing their twisted, hateful & fascistic values on the entire population of the United States. The Supreme Court either needs to be expanded, or the justices who lied through their teeth in order to get appointed so they could dismantle civil rights for marginalized groups and impose their christian nationalist values on the rest of us, need to be removed.

3. Publicly address and take a position on eliminating dark money and lobbying from elections, in particular when it comes to senate and congressional races. Both houses of congress have been corrupted by capitalism. Aside from a few members of each house who only accept small donations from constituents and refuse donations from lobbying groups, think tanks or corporations, just about all members have made it their top priority to serve corporate and moneyed interests rather than the vast majority of American citizens, whose very labor creates corporate wealth and keeps the economy going. The Citizens United ruling by the corrupted Supreme Court has created a free for all in which unregulated and unaccountable corporations pay elected officials to do their bidding at the expense of the well being of the American populace. We are paying the price for this corruption in the form of gun violence, global warming, pollution, stagnant wages, price gouging, housing crises and unchecked violent rhetoric that results in hate crimes committed against marginalized groups.

Most of us are aware that this country is at a tipping point. Fascism is on the rise, white supremacist and nazi groups are free to walk the streets or go online to promote their violent and hateful rhetoric unchecked. Yet children’s books that teach about empathy and diversity, and text books that teach the dark elements of American history, such as racism, slavery, white supremacy, colonialism and the genocide of Native Americans, are being banned and burned in those same streets.

Right wing Republican and christian nationalist citizens, media figures and political figures make repeated threats that there will be a civil war if the rest of us don’t meet their demands.

Queer people are being demonized by media figures and networks, elected officials and religious leaders, as pedophiles, groomers and child murderers. Those with conservative media platforms are claiming that queer people plan to add pedophiles to the LGBTQ+ umbrella. This stochastic terrorism is resulting in violent attacks on, and the murder of, queer Americans.

Women seeking abortion care and medical professionals who provide it are being harassed and terrorized by out of control christian nationalists who are egged on by their religious leaders, elected officials, and the christian nationalist majority on the Supreme Court.

White supremacy and racism are being reinforced in our institutions (again, with the help of the corrupt Supreme Court), and practiced every day by white christian nationalists who think they are God’s chosen ones and therefore entitled to their racist beliefs and behavior, all while claiming that racism and white privilege don’t even exist.

Lastly, religious leaders and people who work at religious organizations, combined with Republican elected officials, most of them straight, white and male, have accounted for more incidents of media reported child sexual abuse in 2023 than any other demographic in this country. Not drag queens. Not queer people.

This message is long, and if you’ve read this far, I thank you for it. But I haven’t even touched on global warming, renewable energy, rising temperatures and the mass migration that is about to occur as a result of it. I haven’t even touched on labor issues, wage theft, the Mandate for Leadership, the deadly threat the Heritage Foundation poses to all Americans, or the way unregulated corporations are using their power in the market to influence election outcomes. I also haven’t touched on Putin’s ties to so many members of the Republican party, from the current Republican frontrunner down, or how the moneyed class are investing in fortified homes and underground bunkers, hiring security teams to protect them from the climate and economic disasters that their own fossil fuel and tech companies, their own unbridled selfishness and greed, have created.

The time to tackle these threats to democracy is NOW. You know it. The vast majority of Americans know it. We need leaders with the courage to attack these issues head on. To overpower and incapacitate the forces that would set democracy aside in order to impose their christian nationalist agenda upon all of us. Who don’t answer to corporations and the billionaire class, but to the American citizens who vote them into office. And who aren’t afraid to call out our enemies, both foreign and ESPECIALLY domestic, for the unhinged, anti-American would-be destroyers of democracy that they are.

Leaders need to lead, and now is the time for you to do so. You must show us that you are aware that these issues exist, that they are threatening American democracy, that you have legitimate positions on these issues, and that you have a strategy and plan of action to tackle these issues, a strategy and plan of action that you will implement immediately if you’re elected.

That is the bare minimum of what’s required of you. You know that, right? Please tell me that you know that.

And now we wait for you to speak. You’re on.