You know how infuriating and offensive it is when we hear the media and the GOP talking about real Americans, and by that they mean white, male, Christian, straight, cis, born in a cornfield, swaddled in the flag, and weaned on Bud/Coors/Pabst Blue Ribbon middle American farmers? Yeah, how about we stop doing that to ourselves.

We dislocate shoulders patting ourselves on the back for how diverse our party is. Cool. And it is. We are the party of looking forward, to growth and prosperity, equal pay, equal rights, equal opportunities and safety for all. We howl in outrage and anguish at the recent, systematic dismantling of our all too fragile democracy. Now how about we act like we mean it?

As harmful as it is to pretend there aren’t millions of voting Americans who support this administration (yanno, the whole thisisnotwhoweare), it is equally–if not more so–harmful to pretend the only Democrats who matter are your kind, whether your kind is progressive, moderate, or some other faction. If you are saying the only possible Dem candidate to take back the White House is the one you support, if you are preemptively spouting conspiracy theories about why your candidate won’t win the nomination and is being robbed by the establishment/socialists/whatever; please stop.

Please. If you are passionate about your choice for the Dem nomination, excellent. Campaign for them, brag about their accomplishments, vote for them, make your case about why you believe they are the best choice, buy them flowers, tell them you love them and call them in the morning. But don’t viciously rip the other candidates and their supporters, don’t bellow they are the same as those who support the current White House and GOP. They aren’t. You may not agree with them/their candidates about everything, or even most things. But they aren’t trying to take away your democracy, your right to clean air and water, your right to freedom of religion/speech/marriage equality/voting rights–your basic human rights.

But someone else is. Millions of someones are. And the GOP, by their Senate vote on impeachment yesterday, made it clear. They are all for a dictatorship, they’re done with equality and justice for all, the rule of law, this little experiment called America. I know there are some who will read this post and splutter, Mrs Fringe is romanticizing the America of 2015, she’s forgetting the ERA was never passed, voting rights have been under attack long before 2016, she’s forgetting Trayvon Martin, and Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland, and Flint Michigan, and stop and frisk, DREAMERS, the opiod crisis, children in cages, the school to prison pipeline, the imaginary weapons of mass destruction that got us into Iraq, and climate change, and mass shootings, and the working poor who have been living in their cars and in shelters for years, and unaffordable medicine, and why we need strong borders, and Israel, and the deficit, and on and on.

I promise, I am not. I am remembering. I am not imagining a pipe dream of who we are. I am remembering this. is. not. normal. It isn’t normal, but it has now become normalized. I am remembering the upcoming elections are our last shot for who knows how long to try and get this country back on the path of democracy. I know how this sounds. We’re taught–and we teach–to shoot for the stars, go for the gold, marry the person who makes your heart sing and your consciousness expand (or something, I dunno, I’m not a romance kind of gal). But we haven’t been taught–and don’t teach–to give up and starve to death if we don’t become movie stars and instead wait tables until retirement, lay down and die if we get a thanks-for-playing certificate instead of the gold, marry the person who beats you to death if you don’t marry the one who first broke your heart.

Be passionate. Be loud. Make your case and share your dream of our country led by your candidate of choice. When the caucuses and primaries are over, maybe your candidate will have come out on top. Maybe I’ll agree they were the best choice. Maybe not. Whether they were my first choice or not, I will support them, and I will believe even if they were my last choice, they are THE choice. I may not love them. You may not love them. We don’t have to. We’re choosing a President for four years, not a dictator who will in turn hand their golden scepter to their progeny, not a God (despite the current theories and apparent intentions on the right). I will know, whether it’s the most progressive candidate or the most moderate, they will not implement the hellscape currently being crafted by those in power today.