Memory is a strange animal.  And among its most mysterious behaviors is the way past recollections are triggered by current experiences and events.  This morning I woke up and my first thoughts turned to May 7, 2003, a day which had been tucked away in my organic data banks for years.

In the spring of 2003, I team-taught a class in “Business and Politics” as part of the executive MBA program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.  The curriculum included a one-week visit to Washington, DC, during which the students met with their congressional representatives, executive agency officials, Supreme Court staff and lobbyists.  On Wednesday evening we attended a reception at the National Press Club followed by a panel discussion on “the Political Landscape.”  The two panelists that night were Donna Brazille and Ed Gillespie.   Brazille was head of her own political consulting firm after serving as campaign director for Gore 2000.  Gillespie was chair of the Republican National Committee.  Never did I imagine how 14 years later the two of them would be at the center of political firestorms in their respective political parties within a 48 hour period.

It was a different time.  Both talked about being good friends and confessed they often communicated with each other.  (It helps explain how James Carville and Mary Matalin are still married.)  Even after the contentious 2000 presidential election, there was an air of mutual respect.  I came away feeling good about having had a chance to meet Gillespie and listening to his assessment of his party’s future.  I still disagreed with the Republican formula for making America better, but never viewed it as a threat to basic American values.  Ed Gillespie was a decent human being who just had a different perspective on what was best for the United States.

No one is more pleased than I, a native Virginian, in Ralph Northam’s election as the next governor of my home state or his stunning margin of victory.  And I still have hope the good citizens of Alabama follow the example of Old Dominion voters and send a message that bigotry, homophobia and xenophobia do not win elections.  But, a lingering disappointment remains, a disappointment in the realization that another otherwise decent individual had been corrupted by Donald Trump’s anti-Midas touch, the ability to taint anything and anyone within his proximity.

So let’s take a page from the brave women and children who have confronted sexual predators through the #MeToo movement.  Let’s start a #YouToo campaign by applying this hash tag to every individual who sheds his or her values in defense of Trump.  Not to abase them for making a wrong decision last November.  But to remind them what Trump is doing to America pales in comparison to what he is doing to citizens who continue to blindly follow him.  That this is not about their vote, but their very soul.  To remind them they used to be better than that and can be again.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP