By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
To say that 2020 is one of the most unusual years in American history—political and otherwise– is an understatement, and there are a number of things that have developed that I would have previously thought to be highly improbable, if not impossible. Three groups of people who have traditionally identified themselves politically as Democrats are “exiting, stage left” (as 1960’s iconic Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Snagglepuss used to say) from the Democratic Party, and are planning on voting for President Donald Trump on November 3. They are Jews, Latinos, and Blacks, and their numbers are growing every day.
Because theatre has long been used to tell stories and express political narratives of every persuasion, “exiting stage left” in this context packs an ironic punch. In the verbiage of the theatre world: “Stage left is considered the open side of the stage, so, for example, if you want to give the impression that someone is exiting the stage and will keep going, like off into the distance, toward open possibility, etc., you’ll have them exit stage left.” So, even though from the perspective of the actor as he or she is facing the audience, moving off toward the actor’s left actually serves to illustrate moving toward the right from the audience’s side of the stage.
Moving on, here is a more pragmatic perusal of the facts. All three people groups, as is the case with many people groups, possess as a part of their cultural story irrefutable evidence of oppression. All have been owned by others, oppressed by others, and killed by others. Some of those offenses have occurred on American soil, and in the case of all three groups, throughout history those things occurred at biblical levels outside of our borders.
Enter the Democratic Party, the so-called party of compassion, the party that is a voice for the oppressed, the party that lifts up the downtrodden, and the party of social justice, economic justice, reproductive justice, historical justice, ecological justice, gender assignment justice, gender re-assignment justice, marital justice, and whatever justice the previously mentioned quests for justice may have missed. This is the party that promised to bring economic justice by using the promise of a guaranteed income in exchange for removing men from their families through The Great Society of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
This is the party that wants the taxpayer to pay for the dismemberment and death of pre-born children, and makes sure that their highly lucrative death camps are located in African-American neighborhoods. This would be a dream come true for Margaret Sanger, who did not attempt to hide that one of her goals was to eliminate black people.
The Lexit movement has as its slogan, “Leaving the Democratic Plantation of Enslavement.” They also say that they want to help Latinos leave the liberal left and embrace conservatism and conservative values. Jexit says, “Our mission is to educate Jews about this dangerous shift in Democrat policy, its voices, its spokespersons, and its clear shifting away from support of Israel.” They believe that the Democratic Party has turned its back on Israel, America’s strongest ally. They say further, “We cannot be complicit in this dangerous trend; Israel’s very existence depends on us.” And as for Blexit, its founder, Candice Owens, states, “Blexit is the black exit from the Democratic Party. It’s the black exit from permanent victimhood, the black exit from the false idea that we are somehow separate from the rest of America.” The deal-breaker for several young people was reading and comparing the respective party platforms. One of them doesn’t make a great deal of sense, and they came to that conclusion on their own.
Something is making the aforementioned groups long to be a part of something that is embodied in the last stanza of the national anthem: “the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” And, they want to be able to do it without being owned by anyone. My question is, “Who’s nexit?”
