Be a Lighthouse

Light can't lose. Fight won't win.

In these opening days of the second Trump presidential term, we hear a loud chorus of pundits suggesting that the disaffected masses — Democrats, liberals, independents — should fight the president’s agenda.

I understand them but I believe that is a losing strategy. The problem with fighting the MAGA movement is that they love to fight. It’s fun. It energizes them. They feel they have already won something just because people want to fight them. Any time liberals or Democrats or independents show anger toward them, well, that’s medium-rare steak and a baked potato right there. Basking in someone else’s anger and resentment is pretty much the same thing as winning, to them.

For more liberal folks, being in a fight is an unpleasant sensation. Liberals strive for the world beyond the fight. We have to be honest with ourselves about that. We do kinda cherish our indignation. Maybe we like that a little too much. But we don’t like the fighting.

Put on your psychologist hat for a moment. Observe the crowds at MAGA rallies and study the more MAGA-allied members of Congress. They are adults, but they don’t have much patience to let any emotional issue simmer and settle. They cannot pass the marshmallow test. They bite into hatred hot off the coals. They crunch handfuls of fresh-popped resentment. They grind their molars all night on perceived victimization. They like to chant simple slogans. They thrill to hear their leader tell the same stories, or the same lies, over and over.

They are… childlike.

We must treat them the way a wise, firm parent treats a loudly misbehaving child. We must say “No,” and mean it, and then be silent, and ignore protests, and hold firm, and not engage further.

(This post appeared first to paid subscribers of Thoughtful Enough. If you are reading it later when it surfaces for free access, welcome! I hope you’ll consider subscribing to get all the good bits when they are freshest. Now back to our discussion…-JG)

We will not characterize our response as a war or a fight. That sort of language engages the MAGA imagination and excites it. The MAGA pulse quickens! So we will not be soldiers or boxers.

We will be lighthouses.

We will illuminate the path to the harbor of civilization while warning people away from the rocky shoals that threaten disaster. Our light comes like clockwork.

Flash! There, in the surf, that one is unconstitutional.

Flash! That one? It is illegal.

Flash! That one in between the swells is an autocratic power grab.

Flash! That one is racism wearing a disguise of tax policy.

Flash! That one they call ‘national security’ actually is just bigotry.

We lighthouses will illuminate the path to the safe harbor: “Look there! In our America, we do it that way.”

(Lighthouse in a storm photo by Joshua Nowicki online at www.weather.gov)

I’m not going to run for office to oppose our new president in Congress. I’m not going to sue him and drag him in front of court after court, all the way to the Supreme Court. I’m not going to pitch a tent in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House and bark through a bullhorn at the bulletproof windows of the executive residence while I bake breakfast Pop Tarts over Sterno. I’m not going to shout hoarsely to try to change the minds of MAGA citizens who come to Washington to celebrate their leader.

But I will be a lighthouse, pointing to where we all need to be, and as it happens, where we need to be is not where the MAGA crowd stands today.

When our new president tries to scrawl his Sharpie graffiti over the U.S. Constitution, I will illuminate the Constitution and his inability to revise it by fiat. He signed an executive order on his first day in office intending to end “birthright citizenship,” so…

Flash! I uphold the clear text of the first sentence in the14th amendment to the Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Then I note that his executive order focuses on the phrase “…subject to the jurisdiction thereof” but runs counter to the powerful precedent of multiple court opinions.

If the new president wants to change that status, he can! But not with an executive order. First, he needs to author a new amendment to the Constitution, then he needs to get two-thirds of each chamber in Congress to agree to it, then he needs to get three-quarters of the states to ratify it.

Until he gets that new Constitutional amendment ratified, birthright citizenship is bedrock American.

I’m not fighting over the birthright citizenship issue, any more than I would fight if the president commanded the sun to rise in the west over California’s coast tomorrow and to set in the east off Nantucket.

We lighthouses — you, and I, and all our colleagues — we stand where we do for a reason. We help people avoid imminent catastrophe.

We do not move when we sense a storm is coming. We withstand the storm because we are unquestionably strong enough, right where we are.

We do not fight the storm. We were not built to fight. We were built to warn, to inform, to teach, to guide. And there is no need to fight a storm. The storm will pass.

The rocks that threaten will endure, yes, but so will our knowledge of them, and so will the welcoming snug harbor beyond. We can see it from here. We will help the others see it from where they are.