Courage of Conviction

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B. Yeats

 

Democrat Lindsey Simmons challenged Republican U.S. Rep. Vicky Hartzler for Missouri's 4th Congressional District seat. Her insight and experiences are important in understanding the radical Right’s embrace of terrorism in its war on democracy and equality.

She also notes the fatal weakness in intimidated and corporate-owned institutional Democrats. Their meekness shows they lack the courage of conviction found in the pro-democracy fighters in red states.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I launched my campaign for Congress in 2019.

I was harassed. My home was vandalized, multiple times. I received violent threats. My car was followed by active Klan, with my 2 year old in the car.

We fought a righteous fight out here.

And the Dems in DC don’t give a damn.

Volunteers and activists from Columbia to Cass County, between Moberly and Marshfield and Lamar to Lebanon—these people endured the same + worse.

On their own property, close to their homes, people had signs burned to the ground, stolen, or shot up by passers-by. 

I called it terrorism as it happened. Because that’s what it is.

Violence + intimidation against civilians for a political purpose.

January 6th wasn’t a shock to us out here. It was a larger finale to a season’s long episode of aggression. 

When you stand up in a deeply red district in a deeply red state, you do it because lives depend on it.

You do it because democracy depends on it.

You do it because the future you want for your kids + grandkids depends on it. 

That future included:

▪ a new voting rights act
▪ ending gerrymandering
▪ universal healthcare
▪ codified Roe v Wade
▪ anti-lynching laws
▪ ending qualified immunity
▪ equal rights amendment
▪ prosecution of the crimes we watched unfold before our eyes the previous 4 years

 And Democrats in Washington, DC who have a seat at the table—they’re playing a dangerous game.

They’re betting our entire country’s future on this notion that if they don’t rock the boat too much, things will calm down, and they can get re-elected and do more “next time”. 

This is a damn fairytale.

We are in the eye of a storm.

And what we do now dictates whether democracy survives after 2024.

You cannot make bets with the underlying assumption being that you will win another election. 

The autocrats aren’t trying to win. They aren’t trying to beat you.

They are actively dismantling democracy such that the American people willingly hand it over.

We won the White House.
We won the House of Representatives.
We won the Senate.

Let’s act like it. 

The days of gentlemanly handshakes and agreeing to disagree are long-gone.

Nine months ago sitting Members of Congress invited terrorists to murder the Vice President and their colleagues.

They have stolen seats on the Supreme Court. 

These are not people who care about decency or precedent or the law.

They care about control.

And we need to care more about doing the hard things instead of looking bad on cable news. 

This week you have Members of a Congress threatening telecom companies if they comply with subpoenas—that’s obstruction of justice.

You have Texas subjugating women.

You have multiple states hellbent on limiting our right to vote.

You have California facing a recall. 

School board meetings are full of parents denouncing science and history.

Politicians are using that chaos to defund public education.

Our nation is in crisis and we’re pretending our hands are tied.

We lack not options for moving forward, but the courage to do so. 

There is no doubt in my mind that our nation is in safer hands with President Biden.

But there’s also no doubt in my mind that if the “political consultants” had the backbone + experience of pro-democracy fighters in red states we’d be a lot more prepared to survive this storm.