Dan,

Good to see you and read your words. I am about to put my last burst in this cycle here in AZ. I do not know what is going to happen tomorrow and I remain hopeful.

I am married to a white woman and I was telling her that whatever happens tomorrow and the coming days it will all be because of white men. Not blacks having low turn out. Or Latinos becoming part of the GOP or anything else. I will be because of white men. Then she asked me, what is your solution?

I am still ruminating on it, but the first thing we must do is call out what is the cause of the failing of our Democracy and Republic: white men.

Something that you did not do in your essay. Allow me to ask why?

I am simultaneously reading KL by Nikolaus Wachsmann and Black Reconstruction by W.E.B DuBois. The similarities between the two time periods and the content of these books is harrowing. Yet, it comes back to the same root cause for the Nazis and the failure of Reconstruction: white men.

You see in your Doomsday scenario what, I feel you are lamenting, is the stripping of your whiteness. My brother is 55 years old. He is the first person, born on either side of my family, who has had the right to vote his entire lifetime. None of his cousins on my Mom's side can claim this and only the three cousins who came after him on my father's side can make a similar claim. We are the descendants of enslaved people here in America.

Your hellscape has been my families reality. Not being able to marry the person you love, we lived it. Being arrested on flimsy circumstances...been there. Forced birth...yep. Not being able to vote...bet. Having your tax dollars siphoned from your community to build and maintain stuff you can't use...here here.

Your hellscape is the oral history of my family.

What I need white men like you to do is start naming why we are here at this point in our history. I need white men to hold other white men to account. Instead of talking around the elephant in the room I need y'all to address it and work on solutions.

Y'all white men are hurting. I get it and I understand it, but it is not me and those that look like me that causing that pain. It is other more powerful and richer white men who have caused you to feel this way. Then they have aimed you at gays, trans, women, black people, brown immigrants, Muslims, and Asians. They have done everything to distract y'all from the real problem: them.

I believe the most important movement right now, to beat back fascism in America is unionization of Starbucks and Amazon warehouses.

I written too much. I have a deep respect for you. Thank you reading my words.