We the People vs Project 2025

My first memory of the election process was in 1972.  I was a First Grader at St. Rita’s School (Catholic) in Racine, WI.  I can remember being on the playground and seeing the older kids wearing handmade buttons saying “Nixon” or “McGovern”.  There were campaign signs in the Upper School hallways that had been made by the Art Classes and at recess the older girls jumped rope while chanting the jingle “Nixon, Nixon, he’s our Man.  Let’s throw McGovern in the garbage can”.  For a few weeks leading up to November, our school became a microcosm of what was happening in the Adult World outside the limits of our black-topped playground. 

On election day our teachers, mostly Dominican Nuns, lined us all up and took us to the gym where mock voting booths were set up, and we voted by putting slips of paper into a decorated box.  I remember standing on my tippy toes to shove my ballot into the slot and feeling proud that I voted.  Not for real, of course.  I was six and it would be twelve years before I could do it officially, but that day I got a taste of what it felt like to participate in the process.  

Nixon won the school vote as well as the national vote and became the 37th President. A couple years later I sat on the couch with my Mom and watched the Watergate Hearings, not understanding what I was watching. I just knew he had done something wrong and was being held accountable.  For many months of my childhood, the nightly news was just Watergate and the War in Vietnam.  That’s quite a duo of topics to imprint on a grade school brain. 

Looking back I learned many lessons in those years.  

The first was that catchy jingles and campaign signs can influence you in the moment and stick with you for years. I guess this was a marketing 101 moment me.  

Second, all elections require an in-the-moment choice based on the resume of the candidate, and their future actions may or may not stand the test of time.  

And finally, that nobody, President or pauper, is above the law.  

But this week SCOTUS said otherwise. When they ruled that our 45th President (and convicted felon) may have immunity from some of the actions taken while in office they have re-written the narrative for years to come.  Only history will be able to accurately judge if their decision was based in Constitutional law or was politically (or personally) motivated.  

But faced with the facts of multiple trials looming, being an Apologist for the perpetrators of Jan 6, and a documented series of unhinged posts on social media, we should all think critically about what kind of person we want in the Oval Office.  

Additionally, we need to follow the money to see who they are being influenced by.  This year we have the lengthy and disturbing Project 2025 manifesto offering a glimpse of what a small but powerful fringe of the GOP would like to see become reality. 

I call on everyone to stop being passive about shaping the country we live in.  Read and educate yourself.  Share your thoughts.  Create catchy slogans so simple that kids can remember them.  March.  Protest. Write to your Representatives and demand they do the right thing.  And prepare for the worst, while working for the best.   And Vote.  

Unfortunately, Machiavelli was correct.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.  It’s time we stand up and say “Not in our Country” and demand the checks and balances of our Government remain intact.  SCOTUS got this one wrong.  

We the People have to correct the Court’s mistake by voting to make sure our country does not become another failed experiment in Democracy.  

We have 123 days from today (July 4, 2024).  Use them wisely.