We’ve all seen the many viral videos of town hall meetings during which Republican voters are haranguing their elected Republican officials over the gutting of federal programs crucial to American families. As a result, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has been advising Republicans to stop holding town hall meetings for their constituents. What? Obviously, there is growing fury across the country over Trusk’s (see what I did there?) authoritarian overreach and callous disregard for Americans, even the ones who voted for him. And the NRCC and elected Republicans just want to ignore it?
What has been the Democrats’ response to this so far? They’ve certainly been in a rush to mock the Republican cowardice for refusing to meet face-to-face with their own constituents and listen to what they have to say. A little irony here as it’s been quite awhile since Democrats have actually listened to and understood what it is Democrats expect from their elected officials. But I digress. Here’s a thought for elected Democrats since they’ve had little of that lately: instead of mocking Republicans for not holding town hall meetings, why don’t elected Democrats fill the gaping hole left by elected Republicans’ disengagement? First, elected Republicans don’t care at all if Democrats mock them. In fact, they feed off it. And second, they’ve made it clear they no longer care what their own constituents have to say. But here’s the thing: Republican constituents still want to be heard voicing their disapproval of this administration eliminating federal programs created to help Americans, and I believe they want to be heard by anyone at this point.
This is where an opportunity for Democrats has been created. Elected Democrats everywhere should give both Democrats and Republicans the venues to engage face-to-face with their government representatives since elected Republicans apparently are not. Elected Democrats should be holding town halls all over the country, filling the gap by encouraging both Democrats and Republicans to attend and speak up. Answer their questions and possibly even alleviate some of their concerns. No matter the party affiliation, all Americans are worried at this point—about rising prices, inflation, tariffs, federal programs, downward stock market trends, undermining Social Security and Medicare, alignment with Russia and other dictators, possible recession, quality of life in America, and the Republicans now casually throwing about the words “World War III” like it’s nothing more than a video game.
So I urge elected Democrats everywhere to take this opportunity to engage with both Democrats and Republicans because they all want to hear from and engage in-person with Congress right now. Elected Republicans are taking that opportunity away from their constituents, so please, Democrats, step into the breach and reach out instead of mocking.
Well, OK. You can still mock but only because elected Republicans deserve it for shutting off their own constituents. But who knows? Reaching out and listening just might make a difference to Democrats winning back some much-needed seats in Congress in the midterms and maybe winning back the White House in 2028.
Margie Slivinske
Arroyo Grande
This article appears in Spring Arts Annual 2025.
“…and the Republicans now casually throwing about the words “World War III” like it’s nothing more than a video game.”
Need you be reminded, a large reason Donald Trump was elected was because the Commander in Chief prior to him, Joe Biden (Democrat) was lobbing cluster bombs (MLRS) onto Russian soil. I’m not sure about you, but I had to start looking around my neighborhood for an area for myself and my family to shelter in when Russia, in accordance with its nuclear doctrine, would launch a nuclear counterstrike. The Democratic party is hardly a party of peace.
The whole Ukrainian war didn’t happen in a vacuum. You can thank that legacy organization, NATO, for it. Members of NATO are required to have uniform weapons so each member doesn’t go to war with an oddball collection of weapons and troops from each member country can operate another country’s weapons. These are bought from American weapons manufacturers. Further, each member is required to spend 2% (I believe) of their national budget (or GDP) on these (American) weapons. The more members NATO has, the more the shareholders of American arms manufacturers get enriched. The whole premise of getting Europe’s most corrupt country into NATO was to simply prop up the value of the corporations in America’s military industrial complex. It had nothing to do with “values.” It is a money laundering operation paid for with our tax dollars. As our economy collapses, what remains of our national treasure gets sent over to an unelected, tinpot dictator (Zylenski) who’s wife shops on 5th avenue in NYC and literally drives a Bugatti around Europe.
The fact that DOGE is tearing down our public agencies that administer our tattered social safety net that prevents old folks from eating dog food and starving in winter, that administers public education, and so forth is performative. DOGE needs to demonstrate to our creditors that there is still meat on the bone. That meat is our lives. By slashing spending on social welfare, they are trying to prove their credit worthiness. This wouldn’t be necessary if they could simply balance the budget. Worse yet, cutting federal jobs is just the beginning. They intend on closing the public institutions and directing their former budgets to our creditors and by extension, themselves.
If American’s aren’t doing so already, it won’t be long before our entire country becomes one giant favela with underpaid, corrupt public officials doing the same thing they do in most developing countries, taking bribes for the most mundane things like trying to get your car registered. As someone witness to such an act in a developing country, it makes you question government entirely. We can forget running water. We can forget fixing potholes. We can forget the court system. We can forget a literate, educated society. In the vacuum of well supported secular, public education we can expect religious/private schools of all stripes to start graduating students convinced of all kinds of bizarre ideas. Taken to its extreme, as in the Dark Ages, radical ideas such as a heliocentric universe will send any remaining scientists to the electric chair with the option of course, of converting prior to execution.
I for one, am preparing to eat gruel, live in a hut with a thatched roof, sharpening my plow, and looking for a landowner whose fields I can till.
As Fly points out, there is no space between the R’s and D’s when it comes to psychopathy. Genocide is acceptable to keep the oil tankers moving. Real wealth producers are ripe for fleecing. There really is a Deep State, but it ain’t civil servants, it’s the petro-weapons-cartel.
One of the fun things about the internet and social media is that anyone can proclaim themselves a rock star or a sports hero. Likewise, at a town hall meeting, anyone can proclaim themselves a Republican. Both are claims that are easy to make, and not readily disprovable.
Democrats believe that they can pack the meetings with ostensible Republicans, and somehow convince us that Trump and Musk have lost the support of the Republican party. This is sort of like how they tried to convince us that Biden’s mental state was right as rain, and that the Democrats really, really loved Kamala Harris.
But if the Democrats feel that all they need to return power is to just get louder and shriller, well, go for it.
John D:
The Dems will need a lot more than just getting louder to return to power, that’s for sure. They offered nothing but identity politics as a substitute for bread and butter issues. They’ve marginalized themselves to the point of obscurity. This isn’t to say Trump’s party offers much more, but at least they talked about the issues that mattered to Americans: illegal immigration, housing, rent, jobs, manufacturing, stopping the useless foreign entanglements George Washington spoke about in his farewell address.
It’s too late to re industrialize the US, capital refuses to make the necessary investments, knowing that we Americans expect respectable wages and working conditions. We want unions. Until we earn the dollar a day workers in the developing countries make, there’s no reason to invest here.
There really isn’t anywhere else for capital to invest in and exploit, Chinese products are all over the world and these foreign countries have joined the BRICS union or the Belt and Road initiative. Consequently, capital is strip mining the US in the form of seizing the money used for VA health care, social security, Medicare, and public education. This is their last stand. The dollar is on the verge of collapse from all the debasement that went on with all these bailouts. Upward mobility is gone. It would be nice and neat to blame one party, but we can’t. Both sides have been looting us for decades and there is no recovery for those of us in the working poor.
Just wanted to thank these commenters here for reading my letter and responding. It’s reassuring to know that when one takes the time and the risk to voice one’s opinion, there are people paying attention, even if they disagree.
I do want to clarify a couple of things mentioned in these comments. First, I never said that democrats were the party of peace. There is far too much profit involved in war for either party to pass to up. Second, I agree there in not much difference between republicans and democrats these days when it comes to psychopathy. Third, John Donegan, what you say here is absolutely true. And getting louder and shriller worked out so well for the republicans that maybe it’s time for the democrats to try this strategy. Couldn’t be any worse than their current lack of strategy. And lastly, yes, it would be nice and neat to blame one party but that’s what both sides have been doing and look where that’s gotten us. What both sides need to do is finally understand that both sides have been looting us for decades, instead of trying to lay the blame with one party. In my opinion, only then can we begin to recover from the madness that’s been in charge of our government for years.
“Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” – Mark Twain
Thank you to the commenters here for reading and responding to my letter. It’s reassuring to know that when one takes the time and the risk to publicly voice one’s opinion, there are people paying attention, even if they disagree.
I just want to clarify a few things mentioned in these comments. First, I never said democrats were the party of peace. There is far too much profit in war for either party to pass it up. Second, I agree there’s not much difference these days between republicans and democrats when it comes to psychopathy. Third, John Donegan, what you say here about getting “louder and shriller” to gain back power is absolutely true. And that strategy worked so well for the republicans that maybe it’s time democrats tried it. It certainly couldn’t be any worse than their current lack of strategy. And lastly, I agree that while it would be nice and neat to blame one party, that’s what we’ve been doing and look where it’s gotten us. In my opinion, both parties need to finally understand that both sides have been looting us for decades. Only then can we begin to recover from the madness that’s been in control of our government for years.
“Sometimes I wonder if the world is being run by smart people putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” – Mark Twain