The Big Bill

Here is what I wrote to my senators:

Dear Senator [Cantwell/Murray],

Even voting “no” for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act legitimizes it.

Last November, millions of Democrats did not vote in the presidential election. They refused to participate in a broken game. They were willing to give the presidency to the Trump team, fully knowing the consequences, to stand for what they truly felt was right.

You have the same power. What if, during the vote on the Big Bill, the Democratic senators simply walked out? Make the sergeant at arms force your attendance and compel you to vote “no.” Your willingness to take personal risks, to be vulnerable, and face consequences, is what will shift the minds and hearts of your fellow senators, not your ability to reason, argue, or bargain.

It’s time for a new kind of leadership in American government. As Martin Luther King Jr put it:

“Somehow, we’ve lived with it at its best and been able to look into the face of our most violent opponent and say we will match your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Threaten our children and bomb our churches and our homes and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead and we will still love you. But be assured we will wear you down with all the lashings that we suffer. One day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and your conscience that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory.”

The achilles heel of the Trump team is that they are not willing to suffer for what they believe in.

You will find that the more you are willing to personally risk to stand for what you believe in, the more there will be people, including me, who’ve got your back.

Dylan