Plays by Robert Bowie, Jr…

Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m all in on this “Make America Great Again” (as long as it’s the greatness I remember from the late ’60s and early ’70s — right on!).

I saw the people rise up against the Vietnam War and and I saw an American president resign in disgrace rather than be impeached for his cover-up of Watergate.

The people rose up and the government responded and changed. That’s what democracy looked like back then. I was a starry-eyed American and I believed in it completely.

Maybe I still do. That’s the problem.

In 2014, the country was becoming more divided and, when I retired from the practice of law, I ran for state delegate in a gerrymandered Republican district — and I got crushed. I developed a sense of humor from the campaign but I am not sure I learned enough from my defeat.

The gravity of it.

When I decided to run for office, I was so naïve. I did not realize that I lived in a gerrymandered Republican district, but I proudly considered it my chance to turn the world around, so I ran anyway.

I knocked on around 5,000 doors and in each case asked, “Have your Republican representatives who have been in office for the last 20 years ever knocked on your door and campaigned for your vote?”

Not a single person said yes.

I thought I had this in the bag! This is about people and ideas, isn’t it?

First, I completely misunderstood what gerrymandering creates. It doesn’t just protect the incumbant. I was food for the angry. I didn’t realize that the oppressed had been herded together to forever hear each other and nobody else.

It is impossible to persuade an echo.

Second, I had no understanding of messaging in the echo world. I sent out over ten glossy cards by mail into neighborhoods where I would be campaigning door-to-door a day or two later and would be the first candidate ever at their door.

Again and again, the trash cans around the neighborhood where I would be campaigning would be filled with my messaging. In my eagerness at one point, I got to one of the neighborhoods on the day the mail was being delivered.

I saw the letter carrier stuff a mailbox and a homeowner come out. He looked at my glossy flyer for just long enough to put it under one arm along with the other unwanted mail, then put it in the trashcan without reading it at all.

In the last week before the voting, My opposition blanketed the district with one flyer and spent the total money they had raised for the three Republican incumbents on that single two-sided mailing.

On one side, it contained horrible pictures of Democrats that I had given money to over the years and, on the other side, they listed the votes that I WOULD HAVE voted for if I had been in office anytime after the Civil War.

Both sides of their flyer were blessed by the same really great picture of me with my eyes shut and mouth open.

A few years later, Trump dominated the news cycle with “fake news” and endless lies about everything.

The times have changed and the culture has too. To put it bluntly, Trump was impeached twice, while Nixon resigned just because of the threat of impeachment.

Door knocking and issues got lost. Political flyers now advertise hate to polarize political parties.

Was I always too stupid to realize we could lose our democracy to tax cuts and dark money — and a First Amendment protecting the nameless who propagate misinformation willfully?

I’m trying to be smarter now than when I was a naïve candidate. If the Democrats win the House and perhaps even the Senate, the nightmare of the midterms may change the Congress, but the Supreme Court is still there. The President’s veto power is intact, and the polarization is not likely to change much, even if Trump is impeached again or disqualified from office.

Trump has made capitalism greedy again. I believed in “Don’t ask what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Let’s make it simple: MAGA: Make America Generous Again.

I still can’t really give up my belief that the midterm will change everything, as long as we can talk to each other and listen to each more than we preach at each other.

The trouble is, I can’t really believe that Trump didn’t bring in the National Guard to the blue states for a reason early in his second term, or has militarized ICE and funded it as his army as it gathers around blue state voting places during the election. I can’t somehow believe that he is not the same person that lead the January 6th attack on the Capital.

I’m still a starry-eyed American. I believe we must make America great again — but we must do it together and Make America Generous Again. That is who we were when we knew we were great.