Thread by @MollyMcKew

I'm on a long, reflective train ride today, north back to DC through a corridor of abandonment and desolation, and I think it's time for me to explain why I can no longer say I am a conservative. /1

I'm pretty private about my political views, because the truth is, I only care about one thing: making sure what American stand for wins, and that those who oppose it lose. /2

This didn't use to be a partisan issue.

This used to be the American identity. Our grandfathers fought & bled for this legacy, & built it stone by stone, never wavering when times were hard.

We're pissing it away for the glorious lies people tell us that we want to believe./3

I moved to DC about a week after 9/11.
The city was a ghost town.
The gaping hole in the side of the scorched Pentagon still seemed to smoke.
Flags were at half-mast for weeks, streaming forlornly in the wind in the gorgeous fall light that drenched the Mall. /4

The sense of purpose that is the lifeblood of the city had not yet returned.
No one knew how to restore a sense of normalcy, stop the bleeding, erase the images of people floating like leaves down from the Towers.
Nothing worked. Mail. Security. Everything had to be renewed./5

There was a new fight coming. You could feel it. But that time was silent, and waiting.
I was there to see it, and watch everything that came next. /6

I wasn't a conservative then. On social issues, I never was. But I found a home at a conservative think tank that gave me opportunity and mentorship, and became my DC mothership. /7

Bush championed the issues I cared about. If you read his second inaugural -- this was, and is, what he believes. /8

During his presidency, conservatives like John McCain who believed in the same issues found space to maneuver & fight for many places that would still be less free without the American voice on their side. /9

The color revolutions. The expansion of the EU and NATO to former captive nations. An opening for a new generation of African leaders.

It was an incredible time. It would not have happened without a President who often overruled his advisers to stand up for what was right./10

The people I met & respected from Iraq & the Arab world, and later working in Africa -- reformers, writers, men and women of uncompromising values and character -- were empowered by the Republican president, and championed by Rs I knew, and so I felt this was where I belonged /11

Just as Obama became president, I arrived back in the post-Soviet universe -- just in time to see what Putin was becoming, and the revanchist Russia he was building on the Soviet graveyard, using the money and freedom he had stolen from his people -- /12

-- and to see an American president doing nothing about it, and then opening the battlefield for Putin's advance, and then continuing to do nothing and not enough until the day he left office, knowing his own nation had been attacked, even as others were falling back. /13

Because of this, I didn't question the political faction I caucused with, even though I disagreed with just about everything they had done since Obama was elected president. /14

In rejoining the fight on the Russian rim, I witnessed a lot of loss. The loss of the gains of human freedom. The erosion of representative society. The end of the era when it was possible to believe that freedom and prosperity would only grow in tandem. /15

I watched the people who had fought for their countries ground down & attacked, imprisoned & in some cases killed, & I wondered why no one was saying anything. Why weren't we fighting for the men & women of principle & values? When did we abandon those fighting to be like us? /16

I personally lost a lot, but that was never what mattered -- it was just what opened my eyes to the cost of this terrible silence.

And we all thought, well shit, no matter who comes next, it will be better than this.

Obviously, that was completely wrong. /17

Watching Americans fall for the inflammatory bullshit of a showman narcissist was nauseating -- but watching them cheer sentiments and ideas that were racist, bigoted, and at times neo-fascist cut me to the bone. /18

I understood the "fuck you" sentiment that mobilized the vote for Trump. But how could it be anything but disappointing that good people were so willing to be less, to be diminished, to embrace rage and hate because it felt good. /19

There's nothing about any of what helped give rise to Trump -- the symptom, but not the disease -- that is simple, and I don't want to discuss that here. Except that is this is what the party became, it was born from what its leaders allowed and represented. /20

I can't say I support an ideology that has calculated to take away the rights of citizens, in ways that stand against their supposed party values.

It is an insult to their fellow Americans that they believe not all
Americans are equal. /21

I can't ignore that conservatives have begun to ignore the racists, misogynists, and Nazis among them -- nay, not just ignore them, but profit from their support, wink and nod at these terrible energies, extol and praise people like the President... /22

... who are happy to be seen as their champion until someone suggests they are accountable for the violence and radicalization that has been unleashed. /23

I can't support policies that want to keep Americans just sick enough that pharma/insurance companies can keep gouging us at rates higher than anywhere else in the world b/c our politics are so infested with money than anyone can buy anything if they know what they are doing/24

Newsflash: 90% of the time, the good guys don't want to pay. /25

I cannot support a movement that has allowed legal/judicial extremists to dominate the appointment of judges to move American courts wildly out of alignment with the values of the American people as a means of controlling the American people without requiring elections. /26

I cannot support a party whose elected officials spread toxic conspiracies to mindfuck their fellow Americans with fear and bigotry in order to gain fame & following. I cannot support anyone who ignores this danger to our nation for their own vain bullshit. /27

I cannot support an ideology that demonizes the "other" to isolate, diminish, radicalize us; to redefine what it means to be an American, & who is not; b/c the bigoted view that It's too hard to defend our rights & values for others inevitably means we compromise them at home/28

I cannot support any of these things, which, at their core, argue that not all people are equal, and not all people should be defended by and represented by their government in the same way. /29

I cannot support this because it's just another version of what I have fought against for the past decade in the Russian shadow. /30

Americans don't revel at the shooting of unarmed civilians -- no matter what the context.

The president doesn't ask our men and women in uniform to be prepared to shoot unarmed civilians, many of them women and children. /31

Americans know better than to believe lies because it feels better than knowing the truth.

The president doesn't foment a mob so he can point and say "go get that one" -- and they do. /32

Americans don't believe that not all people are created equal.

The president doesn't believe that cruelty is a policy tool when it targets children and the poor and disadvantaged -- foreign or American. /33

A president who respects our history and our legacy and our greatness does not ask these things of Americans.

This one does. And he has captured a party behind this poison. /34

So I don't know what I am. I believe there is space for political leaders that will defend human liberty and rights, represent the progressive human values that younger Americans accept without question, while believing, as Teddy Roosevelt did... /35

... that our natural environment should be defended and preserved as one of our greatest resources, and while defending our history and role in the world, and the idea that we are the beating heart of the better world where more people can be free. /36

Free to love, learn, innovate, explore, prosper. Free to just be, and try to live well, as they can.

There are big economic upheavals coming with the mechanization of everything, automation and AI. No one is providing a vision for that. /37

And so far no one is willing to lead in defending the idea that individual lives matter. That every person is created equal, and deserves equal dreams, and the right to aspire for more. /38

If we enter this new post-work era with this cynical erosion of the rights of the individual, it won't be long before the monstrous shit of past centuries is again heralded as sensible solutions. /39

Here's the truth: societies aren't held together by values alone. They are held together by shame. The use of shame, the fear of shame. It's the container that keeps extremists from taking over. /40

Every nation has the 20% equivalent that is backward-looking and xenophobic and believes people not exactly like "tradition" don't belong and can't contribute, only steal from those who "deserve" things. /41

Shame is what makes them the fringe. Trump has torn down those shame walls, and now we will all be held accountable for his actions. /42

Just remember: it didn't need to be this way. Trump could have won the country if he had been willing to do so. But that isn't what he wants. He wants to burn it down, isolate it, leave it powerless and thus more manipulable by a small cadre of cronies. /43

It's the only world he has ever believed in and known. It's why he feels kinship with bad guys and thieves and tyrants. He has never had the vision to see anything more. /44

It hasn't gotten better. It has gotten far worse. There is no bloody "deep state resistance" constraining the worst impulses. The people around the president can't even stop him from ripping up papers -- let alone the nation. /45

But if you ignore what he does -- look only to what benefits your pocket or your homestead or your sense of vengeance, as opposed to how he sculpts political violence as a means of manipulation and control -- then you helped make it worse. /46

In electing a demagogue, we have sacrificed our innocence. There are moments when I'm not sure if we can ever get it back. I want the sense of optimism to return, the belief that any individual can do anything, that anyone can shape the nation& be part of something truly great/47

I've heard every possible explanation from my republican friends about why they have to stay silent on Trump, or how exhausted they are of having to denounce his loathsome actions, or how they would rather focus on the "good" he has been doing while president. /48

Newsflash: the two Trumps are the same Trump. You do not get to extricate one from the other. You've signed on for the whole ride. /49

And if this was the vehicle to get your policy agenda enacted, maybe it was garbage in the first place /50

So for a while, I was a republican. And while I still believe there are honorable republican leaders, they must learn to find their voice, unless they are this. /51

Until they stop hiding behind the odious shield of a terrible man to enact their shameful policies that are dividing American society, crushing the American legacy, and limiting American rights -- I'm not sure there's a one that is decent enough to cast a vote for. /52

But evaluate who is in your district and state. Know their character. Help find the next, better generation of political leaders we so desperately need. /53

I wish I could say different. I deeply believe that the nation needs the balance of progressives and conservatives to maintain course. /54

But for now, conservative is not the right label for what is left. The sun is down, and the moon is out, and the shadows of the darkness and hatred that were the quiet torrent of the 1930s, and burned the world, dance all around. /55

We are better than this.
Sure, it is easier for someone to tell you you aren't, and for you to wrap yourself in the comfort of victimhood and low expectations.
But fuck that pathetic bullshit.
Be better. Everyday, be better. /56

I recently met a lady who told me that she picks up shells from the beach, & writes hopeful political messages on one side, and then SOS on the other, and leaves them around where she thinks people will find them, so hopefully someone else can be inspired, and feel less alone./57

And there was something about this that was so poignant, and so beautiful -- so reductionist and yet so expansive -- that I haven't been able to put this gesture of defiance and reunification out of my mind. /58

The truth is, there are no white horses. No one is coming to save you. There's only us. And what will save us from the abyss we teeter on the edge of is these small gestures of defiance and reunification and leadership, multiplied by a hundred, a thousand, more. /59

These are simple things to give. It is the silence, the inaction, that will cost you.

And I don't want to pay anymore.

"So be brave, the rest is easy."

/60x