There’s got to be a way we can build a new coalition that doesn’t have to involve giving political power to outright racists, misogynists, religious bigots and know-nothings and their backers in the monied elites.
So, the rest of us, the 80 percent of the country that has to wake up each morning to work jobs to keep the lights on, let’s make a deal, how ‘bout?
Speaking for the left, I’m willing to concede a few things, in the spirit of compromise, because in the spirit of compromise, we’ve all got to be willing to give a little.
Folks on the right: whaddya say?
Here’s what I’ll give
Guns
Yeah, I know, I’m hearing it from my side on this already. You’re already giving away the store.
Reality check: the proliferation of guns in our society is here to stay.
No putting the toothpaste back in the tube here.
I can’t imagine government ever being able to do a mass-scale confiscation, considering what they’d have to be confiscating.
I mean, seriously, taking away guns, from people who have, you know, guns?
I know, the types who have been making a big deal about wanting to have guns because they want to be able to fight back against a tyrannical government haven’t exactly been fighting back against the tyrannical government.
Anyway.
No, not giving away the store here.
Removing dangerous undocumented foreigners
It’s not 25 million, as Donald Trump keeps trying to get you to believe, but it’s not zero, either.
Border Patrol data tells us 85,000 undocumented foreigners were arrested for one or more crimes during the period between the start of fiscal year 2017 and the end of the third quarter of 2025 – we’re talking there about assault and battery, domestic violence, sexual violence, homicide, burglary, robbery, drug possession/drug trafficking, DUI.
We shouldn’t need to go door-to-door trying to find these 85,000 people like they’re needles in a haystack, because they’re not.
We have paperwork; don’t need to stop random people on the street and go knocking on doors to find them.
And we certainly don’t need to terrorize entire communities with a dragnet that picks up a wide swath of brown-skinned people who don’t have the proper paperwork, but have jobs, have families, pay taxes, contribute to society, and don’t have so much as a parking ticket on their records.
What the right needs to give
Reproductive freedoms
I’m not telling you that you need to change the way you think about abortion, just accept that it’s not cut-and-dried like you think it is.
Four percent of cases involve medical necessities or rape/incest.
Forty percent involve women who are below the federal poverty line; another 30 percent involve women just on the other side.
We can address everything but the medical necessities part by working together, first and foremost, by prioritizing getting women on either side of the poverty line into better economic situations, and by positioning our law enforcement resources to protect women and adolescent girls from being victims of sexual assault.
LGBTQ+
You don’t have to like or accept LGBTQ+ folks; just come to the realization that, they exist, they’re people with real feelings, real emotions, real struggles, like you and me, and frankly, whether you like or accept them doesn’t mean a hill of beans.
If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t enter into a gay marriage.
You don’t approve of gender-affirming care, hey, nobody’s making you transition.
What we can all do together
The so-called Big, Beautiful Bill is wasting $170 billion – billion, with a b – on ICE.
Fun figure: author Matthew Desmond, in his book Poverty by America, estimates that the dollar figure needed to get every American above the federal poverty line is: $177 billion per year.
All that money that we’re literally throwing into the abyss for no good reason, we could be using to lift us all out of poverty.
There are so many ways we can get to that place – to get the 36 million people currently below the poverty line onto the other side.
Just getting the top 1 percent to pay what they’re supposed to pay in federal income taxes – not paying a higher rate than they are now, just paying what they’re supposed to pay – comes to $175 billion a year.
The top 1 percent earn between $730,000 and $1 million per year.
Those folks just pay what they’re supposed to pay in taxes, we get 36 million people out of poverty.
Do that, and also top wasting billions on frivolities like ICE, and we can also put money toward affordable housing and Medicare for All, so that we all have access to good living conditions and the world’s best healthcare system.
And put more money to our K-12 public schools, so that our kids can learn more than how to fill in ovals on a standardized test.
If we focus on working together, we could then spend less of our time taking shots at each other on social media, and more time on these things, and others like, working together to address the wealth disparities that have CEOs making 600 times what the average worker makes, while telling us that there’s not enough money in their corporate kitties to pay workers a living wage.
Living wages, Medicare for All, affordable housing, better schools, nobody in poverty.
We all get that; not just the left.
The left also gets enshrined protections for women’s reproductive freedoms and LGBTQ+ equality.
The right gets to keep its guns, and we agree to remove the 85,000 actual undocumented foreign criminals.
The 1 percent is pissed about all of this, because we’re going to make them pay their taxes, and who knows, we might actually work together to put curbs on their ability to horde ungodly sums at the expense of the rest of us.
Frankly, f**k the 1 percent.
Also pissed at us: the 20 percent of us who are hardcore racists, misogynists, religious bigots and know-nothings who have been ascendant for the past decade, by teaming with the 1 percent to foment political civil war, which is now on the verge of transitioning from political to actual, because that’s what happens, historically, when you get monied elites teamed with shock troops on the front lines.
F**k them, too.
It’s time we, the people, who work real jobs, want our kids to do better than we did, want our neighbors to have it good, take the power back from the hatemongers and the filthy rich.
It can be done.
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Chris Graham
