A Kaleidoscope Political Movement
A kaleidoscope is a powerful metaphor for a group of people, symbolizing how individual differences (the colored glass) and different viewpoints (the mirrors) combine to create something beautifully unified. It emphasizes diversity, adaptability, and how a team’s collective brilliance shifts and reorganizes depending on the environment. This is exactly the kind of movement we need in the U.S. to combat Trumpism.
Oftentimes, powerlessness and despair lead people to turn on one another. Far too many who are afraid to confront a crisis instead fight their neighbors. The history of conquest, colonization, and capitalism is filled with such examples. Like clockwork, we can identify those who are confused, stuck, or deluded by their inability to determine where to direct their fury. In the face of vast oppression, rather than aiming at their tormentors and tyrants, they instead blame those closest to them. This is common in places where poverty flourishes, conflict simmers toward a boiling point, and rigid ideologues preach.
In the face of the GOP’s fascism, Donald Trump, and the MAGA movement, many in the U.S. seem doubtful about our collective power. There needs to be some level of understanding to overcome it.
Here in the U.S., “leftists” continue to define themselves by pointing fingers at one another, even going so far as to blame each other for genocides, imperialism, and geopolitics that are far beyond their respective spheres of influence. This is a gross overestimation of their own relevance, size, and impact. After all, if you took all the different factions of leftists (socialist, marxist, anti-capitalist, anarchists, etc.) in the U.S. and added them together, you would total 1–3% or less. While the Broader “liberal” identification is much larger, around 25%, with 35% identifying as moderate. This is where the bulk of the non-Republican, non-MAGA population resides ideologically.
This leftist microcosm reflects a much larger problem and highlights the delusion we are inundated with. It is a place where you can easily see how twisted people become in self-important quests, while failing to push back against all that they claim to oppose at home. Genocide is not happening because someone you don’t like posted a take you disagree with on social media.
Imperialism does not require the consent of a U.S. population in which roughly 100–110 million voting-age people did not vote. In addition, an estimated 10 to 20 million registered Democrats likely did not vote in the 2024 election. Because of this fact, the U.S. is often described as an oligarchy in which public opinion does not truly influence policy. The Trump administration does not need to “distract” people from the Epstein files for the same reason it does not appear to care about the public will at this point. It does not appear to fear the public much, if at all. The question remains: will we give them a good reason to?
The answer is “no,” as long as people focus on ideological arguments and petty games that have nothing to do with organizing to defeat MAGA, the GOP, and the oligarchs (the billionaire boys’ club). This will not happen by waiting for any political party, an outside government, or a hero to do it for us. Expecting as much is an entitled and lazy U.S. mindset. It will not happen by projecting ourselves onto movements that we are not part of, or by pretending we are part of them solely based on ideological identity. It will not happen by being loud influencers on social media, pundits, or celebrities who simply react to worsening conditions with clickbait for the sake of engaging their followers.
Instead, we must take the road away from all of this absurdity toward a better coalition. At present, there are many center-right to left divisions due to racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, cultural, economic, and geographic differences. These hinder individuals, organizations, and entire communities that already interact, share many of the same concerns, face similar obstacles to their well-being, and already cooperate and agree to varying degrees. These are the people we must bring together in a “big tent” to achieve an overwhelming defeat of Trumpism. To build an enduring majority movement, we have to grow beyond the goofiness that leftism is reduced to in the U.S. while fascism thrives.
Don’t let the “leftists”—not leftism, and there is a difference—distract and waste our time. These “revolutionaries” are everywhere, but nowhere is there any real revolution. The abundance of loud, self-styled radicals talking as if they are generals of great armies or have major revolutionary accomplishments under their belts is utter absurdity. It is especially asinine when losses are piling up. What is there for them to be so arrogant about?
A true, enduring majority movement will have to break free from orthodoxy and minor policy disagreements and learn through actions that bring our politics to life. “We cannot wait until our old recipes start to work after all.” We are repeating past mistakes based on petty nonsense. We are regularly falling apart. If we do not want the failure of all this to keep falling on us, then we should move out of its way. We should move on to bigger, better, and more thoughtful practices.
Our focus needs to be on a happy, healthy, wealthy, and educated middle class; this is the goose that lays the golden egg. It is not about billionaires, hyper-consumption, planned obsolescence, or culture wars. The old Confederacy, with its racism, sexism, and bigotry, must finally and unequivocally be defeated.
An easy-to-understand and easy-to-digest, inclusive economic populist message focused on the middle class (including white people, black people, people of color, and women). This message should also directly call out the corruption of the Trump administration and today’s Republican Party. Do not get distracted or divided by minute details. Do not focus on petty issues that lead to the endless fragmentation of the message and are used by the GOP to frighten and divide the coalition. The ideas of fairness and compassion should be enough for these groups to understand that the Democratic Party will look out for them without having to complicate the simple overall message.
Once elected, we must decide what we want our nation and government to be and then establish a progressive tax policy that is fair and free of gimmicks, such as a wealth tax, to pay for it. Certain functions do not lend themselves to the profit model, including national defense, law enforcement and the justice system, fire protection, public infrastructure, education, healthcare, emergency response, pensions, and safety nets such as unemployment insurance, disability services, and food assistance. We must be good fiscal stewards and stop the massive deficit spending started by Reagan and the GOP once and for all.
A good model is the Nordic system—not socialism, but a well-run and regulated form of capitalism with strong government services, producing a system that is fair and supports an educated, happy, and healthy middle class. It features high business competitiveness and openness to trade, strong worker protections alongside flexible labor markets, and significant public investment in healthcare, education, and infrastructure, fully funded by a fair progressive tax system.
"The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good."
- Pope Leo XIV
