Last week, no less than eleven people on my facebook shared this “confession” from Mike Rowe, with positive comments.

I can’t believe people think this deserves anything other that derision.

He’s more “Hollywood” than the people he denigrates. It takes real political courage to potentially alienate half your viewers, it takes none to opt-out with the tired “I won’t say, other than our politics sucks”-cop-out. It is pure pandering to use ill-thought-out platitudes like “voting is a right, not a (civic) duty” and “most people are too stupid or uninformed to vote” in a manner crafted so that **all** sides can retweet, repost, and feel self-righteous about it.

Pathetic.

If you take his philosophy to its natural and logical conclusion, we as a country should reinstitute literacy tests and poll taxes to disenfranchise minorities and other such undemocratic measures. After all, what better way to ensure a enlightened democracy than to allow only those with the requisite amount of education and capital to make the “right” decision? Plato agrees, fuck this thing called democracy.

Here is the truth: The United States has been an experiment in whether a democratic republic can ensure liberty. Yes, even if that means risking its failure under a Trump presidency because more people voted for him. Taking that risk is courage; abdicating it, like Mike Rowe, is cowardice.

Ignore the cowards, if you have the right, even if you believe Hitlery will destroy America and needs to be stopped (heck, because you believe she will destroy America), go vote on November 8 this election. That’s an act of political courage and another test of this two hundred and thirty year experiment.

I understand Trump appeal, he is a man who speaks for the “people”. The question for me is not Trump because there is away going to be some asshole who comes along, what bothers me is the alt-right movement altogether. It’s like why is there so much hate that is being taken as logic among this group?

The “alt-right” almost ended our revolution before it was declared. They tore at our republic before it was founded. We fought the bloodiest war in our history with them. When it was finally over, they found a way to void it within a decade so their sin would forever be our sin. Even as recently as 1968, George Wallace carried five states solely on their message. After that, the Republican Party rebuilt their entire party around them. Heck, the anti-abortion movement is their proxy contrived for polite company.

They had many guises and went by many names: slavery, “fit vs. unfit”, “separate-but-equal” “states rights”, movement conservatism, “cognitive elite”, “religious freedom”, and, most recently, yes, the alt-right.

Even before they became “Redeemers” at the first hint of threat to their power, they embedded a nomination rule to ensure they had veto power within the Democratic Party. When that was finally excised to elect FDR, they migrated to the Republican Party and they are only now just discovering that their tiny plurality in their former party comprises the majority of the motivated base of their new one (hence Trumpism).

No, the “alt-right” under some name has always been with us and will always be with us. It is our original sin and a part of the American identity. When they rear their ugly head, they need to be fought and “roundly defeated by the abiding decency and good sense” of the rest of us. And yet, at the same time, sadly, we must admit, they are us: We, the People.

Nobody said democracy was easy.

Comfort yourself with the knowledge that they have always been the losers in our history. They were the losers when they said a black man is three-fifth of a person, they were (are?) losers when they said that a woman couldn’t vote, they were losers when they sent blacks to the back of the bus, forced birth on women, and kept gays from marrying. And, yes, they will be the losers again—they that say build this wall, deport that Muslim, and show your birth certificate at the bathroom door.