To those who are joyously celebrating recent electoral results in Virginia and New Jersey as an empirical testament to the sufficiency of a posture of “resistance” to the current presidential hegemony, and thus extrapolate that this strategy will be victorious in the mid-term elections of 2018, permit me to disabuse you of that erroneous misconception.

The current reliance on both the politics of resentment and the reinvigoration of ethnic grievances and racial prejudices which catapulted Donald Trump to the White House, by those who comprise a central element of the membership of the Republican party, and the dependence by the Democrats on a mosaic of various entities that fervently champion such  narrow and insular concerns  of which an “identity”  political ideology are composed , are inherently flawed and totally insufficient to either restore this nation’s ascendancy in global affairs or reinstate a modicum of social justice to the content of our domestic social fabric.

In order to achieve the previous objectives it is a crucial necessity that beyond critique and condemnation of  much of the current content of the agenda which this president advocates and is attempting to implement however ineffectively, must a prospective national reality be formulated and presented to the citizens of this republic that contains the potential if fully implemented to transform a culture in which inequality, diminishing opportunity, and the unabated impoverishment of 50 million of us are central hallmarks which distinguish our contemporary social circumstances, into a democracy in which in some intrinsic regard, an equitable dynamic  is rendered and dispensed by those institutions which govern and regulate our political system and our economic activities.

However what must animate this endeavor and the location from which this effort must embark is the critical recognition and embrace of the reality that any vision or paradigm which does not encompass the aspirations of the overwhelming majority of our fellow Americans irrespective of their ethnic origins, religious or secular affiliations, places of residency be they urban or rural, or current ideological affinities, or  professional or civic memberships, or the hobbies and leisure involvements in which they participate, is inadequate and will falter and ultimately fail if its transcendent goal is to accomplish the fundamental  reunification of a body politic which is riven, fractured, awash in conflict and basking in the vitriol of a lethal hostility which views those who embrace values or views with which we disagree our not our opponents but our enemies and that as a result a civic discourse of mutual respect and an authentic fervent desire to establish a common frame of dialogue and eventually a locale on which all may stand in agreement is beyond our collective capabilities.

To those who assert that the contemporary realities are so toxic and inflamed and beyond the reach of reclamation, I categorically reject that notion.  What those who comprise the population of the United States at this moment hunger for is a vision of a nation that will both provide redress for those ills and afflictions that beset  us and a future social reality that will in its fundamental essence function in a manner that will finally bestow and inculcate in its daily behavior those principles and promises which were at the heart of the pronouncements and documents that were created by our founding fathers in the sweltering summer in Philadelphia so many decades ago.

By conveying a vision of an equitable cultural future, in which the legitimate grievances of many among us whether they supported the 45th president or his opponent, whether they have been denied economic mobility and a pathway from impoverishment, whether they reside in rural areas in which opioid addiction is pervasive, or in urban enclaves where inequitable law enforcement systems are embedded and where housing is both expensive and dilapidated, whether they are the casualties of a process of globalization and bereft of the educational credentials and skills that are requisite to obtain employment and thus gain access to a comfortable middle-class status, whether they  are mired in debt as the result of loans they assumed to further their educational progress, or whether in some quintessential regard from moribund for-profit entities that advertised curricula for nonexistent occupational opportunities, they are sorely vexed by our contemporary climate of divisiveness and pervasive acrimony and in the center of their consciousness fear that we as a nation have lost our way and are unraveling; it is imperative that the vision we promulgate in response to all these apprehensions and deficiencies contains the capability to redress these injustices and ameliorate these wounds.

For those who are quietly pursuing the construction of those campaign structures that will in the not too distant future become public in their intent and fervent in their operational behavior in the pursuit of the nomination of their respective parties to carry in 2020 the banner of  the anointed candidate who is charged by their political cohorts to garner both the popular and electoral votes required to establish residency in the White House, I implore you to craft a socially just vision and disseminate it to every corner of this nation.  To appeal to members of all parties and those who are not affiliated, to convey the fact that previous loyalties are irrelevant and that all are welcome in this new era of an equitable America.  To solicit all those who wish to join with you in the process of creating a nation where the politics of resentment and prejudice, as well as the politics of identity will no longer be necessary or relevant because a republic in which an equitable paradigm and dynamic is operative will by its very existence remediate those injustices which spawned these political movements and render their continued existence superfluous.