A lot has been written about things I agree with. I was thinking that this post would be about the history surrounding the founding of the United States, and why I think the Right is being pretty disingenuous when they quote the founders and the framing documents around the constitution.

So I started reading up on what others have written, and I realized I had nothing to add. I could do a link dump, but that really would just be adding to the noise out there on the wider web. I found this awesome write up of President Washington’s views on political parties. It was posted on the very last day of 2014, long before we entered the twilight zone of Trumpism.

So back to the drawing board. I speak with Amanda, the love of my life, about social issues all the time. Everyday she cautions me about not trying to speak about subjects which I have no personal experience of. Between us we have experienced just about everything straight white English speakers can experience. We can have a great conversation about gender issues, because for the most part we cover the spectrum, but we cant speak with personal experience on gay issues or transgender issues. We can only have opinions.

I want to know what’s going on in the other communities. The Black community for example. I don’t say African American because I know enough British dark skinned people where that term does not apply. Here in the UK ‘Afro Caribbean’ is used, but it leaves out the immigrants from Africa whose parents may have never been effected by the slave trade. How in the hell can I speak on the issues effecting black people when there is so much to account for? How can I presume to speak on an issue that has never really effected me, and shout an opinion onto the internet from a position of ignorance?

Americans are weird people. We tend to disbelieve anything that challenges our world view unless we speak in person with someone who has live it. Frederick Douglass is someone who I consider a spiritual father. He was a slave in Maryland, the state I come from. He escaped to the north, and became one of the Greats in American civil rights. The following paragraph from Wikipedia perfectly sums up my views on politics, and if I had to guess my opinion was formed by reading Mr. Douglass.

Douglass was a firm believer in the equality of all peoples, whether black, female, Native American, or recent immigrant. He was also a believer in dialogue and in making alliances across racial and ideological divides, and in the liberal values of the U.S. Constitution. When radical abolitionists, under the motto “No Union With Slaveholders”, criticized Douglass’ willingness to dialogue with slave owners, he famously replied: “I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”

This man died in 1985, but that quote about unity could have been said by me on Reddit yesterday. So this got me thinking, we as a progressive movement are a coalition of a great many peoples and viewpoints. In my recent actions regarding the Justice Democrats and Cenk Uygur I encountered people who were supposed to be my allies, but I feel that they embody the ‘radical abolitionists’ mentioned above. They dearly wish to do the right thing, but they feel like we need some sort of purity of morals to do that.

I disagree. I don’t care what my brothers and sisters in arms did in the past, so long as we are on the same side in the current fight. We stand at the cusp of an existential crisis for our way of government. People who are Americans; born in our country with blood lines that stretch back to the founding of our nation have taken positions which seek to erode our system of government. We must stop them. The erosion of our system of government must be reversed, and the whole house of liberty needs to be repaired, renovated, and expanded.

In this great struggle of the new millennium, our primary battlefield is that of ideas. We fight online and in the lecture halls. We fight in the streets with protests, and in the halls of government with disruption.

We must continue this course, because the alternative is bloody.

I am a military man. I attained the rank of Staff Sergeant. My way of thinking has been influenced and molded by the military. Some of you will stop here and think that because the Military Industrial Complex is one of the greatest threats to peace and democracy we must put aside this person as poison fruit of a tainted tree.

I stand with all progressives, whether they like it or not. In order to continue my operations in this war for our country I need intel. If I am going to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Homosexual, The African American, The Transgender, The Woman, I need to get their message out, not my own. We Americans have a short attention span, and I feel we need to be reminded of the issues that surround us. They may not be directly influencing us now but as the rights of the oppressed go, so go the rights of the free.

Therefore I would like to start a Youtube show. I would like to ask people from every community to speak with me about the issues that effect them. I need to know what is going on before I can strike at the Right wing hate factory. Make no mistake people, that is my goal, to discredit, dismantle, and demoralize those who seek to divide us and strip us of our rights and liberties for personal gain.

I want to bring the trolls into the light, I want to show the world who they are, and allow us all to judge the issues only on the facts. No spin, no bullshit. This is what is happening, this is what we do to fix or mitigate it.

So let this be my call to anyone who is willing to speak in public to me about the issues effecting them. The shows will last as long as they need to to cover everything. We must first lay out the most basic issues, and build up to the wider issues.

Fredrick Douglass, in my opinion was one of the most important people in the fight against slavery. He convinced the white people on the fence about the issue of slavery by not only talking about the issues, but by making them personal. He, as far as I can tell, never attacked anyone, or called them names. He pointed out reality, and he pointed out the facts. I feel that with out Mr. Douglass, the Civil War may have been delayed by years, prolonging the enslavement of millions of Americans. He is the example I am pointing to when I seek unity and victory for liberal progressive views.

My email is ark40K@gmail.com my twitter name is @JHBoulden. If you want to talk with me, and record it for Youtube publication, please message me so we can arrange a time and date for recording. We need to get out of our echo chambers, and take our message to the people who disagree with us. We have to go with real personal stories that our ideological opponents can relate to. Only by effecting the hearts and feelings of our foes can we than change their minds.

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