Democrats you’ve lost me.

I’ve been a democrat all my life. My father would turn over in his grave should I desert the party he trusted to help him flourish in his new world. Rest in peace, Dad, I’ll never vote for a Republican. But when I read headlines like “Congress clinches $1.2T funding deal for DHS, Pentagon, domestic agencies” and “Democrats support bill that would give ICE $10 billion” and “Jeffries won’t whip vote against ICE funding.” just weeks after Jonathan Ross, a longtime ICE firearms instructor, literally filmed himself shooting Renee Good in the face, I’m sorry, the party has lost me. Unless leadership turns over – Mamdani! AOC! Bernie! Eliabeth! – or unless a new party figures out a blueprint for regime change, I’m left in the dark, lost in the shadows, fantasizing the end of the world as I know it. As a Jew with ancestors plucked off the streets by an armed, masked gestapo, I’m sensitive to history repeating here, in my country, and shortly in my state (as goes Maine, so will go Vermont. What will Scott do? I can guess. ) Jack Smith laid it out, our former president was a felon. So? We elected him again. Of course, not me, but “we” in the sense of “us” not criminalizing him after January 6th. I wonder how my party let Smith be gagged and himself open to conviction. I have no solutions, I’m not a politician. It’s not my game. I did my marching in the ’60’s and am too old now to chase armed goons in the street waving my broom against a rifle as if one could sweep away the yellow filth blasted in the eyes of a helpless citizen. It’s a dilemma: on the one hand I’m filled with awe of my beautiful spinning planet, on the other hand I’m terrified as one species, mine, seems determined to wipe it all out. Yes, I have with me the artists, the poets, the caretakers, GenZ and maybe five of the governors, but our voices are marginalized by the uncanny reluctance of those we elected to protect us. All I have is one voice, however thin, to add to the millions raging against the machine. But for us to be heard, we need our party. We elected you. Fear isn’t an option.