A Martyr for the Democratic Way
Melissa Hortman died for her decades of service, doing the unflashy work Democrats do, for the people, with integrity and conviction.
“There was not enough room in poor Rosamond’s mind for furniture to look small in it,” wrote George Eliot of her character Rosamond Lydgate in Middlemarch. Rosamond’s need for possessions and status finally ruins her family, as her idealistic husband, trying to please her, falls into deep debt and finally loses all, including his honor. Eliot knows enough to pity Rosamond for the smallness of her mind. I should probably pity Kristi Noem, too, her face swollen with artificial fillers, her need for notoriety so great that she can pose proudly with the men she has doomed to life in a gulag, unaware that what she’s displaying is cause for abysmal shame.
Sherrilyn Ifill considers the smallness of our ‘leaders’ in her latest newsletter:
“Trump’s cruelty, his bullying, his endless money-making scams, his threats, and his unchecked abuse of power do not have the ability to change the character of anyone. But proximity to wealth and power can, and often does, reveal the depth of one’s existing character.
Hard as it is to face, what makes Trump 2.0 so painful is that we are compelled to confront the moral degradation, self-absorption, and reckless irresponsibility of so many of those in leadership positions in this country. But confront it we must.”
“It is a fundamental weakness of character that has left so many members of Congress who know right from wrong, mute in the face of Trump’s authoritarian takeover and daily cruelties.” she continues.
She doesn’t say the Republican party and many, many others have been turned to swine, but I’ll go ahead and add it. When Mike Lee, once a respected leader in the Mormon church, goes out of his way to make fun of the assassinations of Democratic leaders, and is not brought up short by anyone in his party or his church, what is IS one to say?
I have puzzled and raged over the capitulation of the media to Trump, but I think the answer is just about as simple. Check this report on Brad Lander’s arrest at a New York immigration court:
Peter Birkenhead points out on Facebook: “It was bad enough when the mainstream media framed every step towards authoritarianism as a mere chess move in the who’s up and who’s down game of DC politics, but now that we’ve fully arrived there this kind of headline (in the Washington Post) amounts to not just a journalistic but a moral abnegation.”1
Lander was there to help, as he has been every day. ICE attacked him, handcuffed him….and it’s framed as a publicity stunt, a way to raise Lander’s profile. These ‘journalists’ suffer from a kind of moral blindness. They can’t see the story. There isn’t room in their heads for a ‘raised profile’ to look small.
When you hear that Democrats have failed to offer a message, after you’ve laughed or cried, remember this. We live in an atmosphere rife with disinformation, looking to weaponize voter ignorance. It comes from the right and the left and from foreign interests, intended to destabilize the one of the two major governmental entities left standing: Democrats. (The Judiciary isn’t vulnerable to election, and is standing tall, even most of the Trump appointees.) The dream that we can get single payer health insurance without filling both chambers of Congress and the Presidency with Democrats… How would that work? Even then the Supreme Court would likely shoot it down, as it did essential provisions of Obamacare—back when it was a more liberal court. That ship sailed when Trump won in 2016. But the airwaves are full of the idea, and somehow blaming Democrats because we don’t have it already.
What’s left of our legacy media (the best of them have joined the likes of me on Substack, because they want to tell the truth) is incapable of recognizing or understanding the Democratic message. It’s about people, families, and communities being allowed to live in safety and freedom, under the rule of law. It doesn’t have a massive TikTok platform. It doesn’t glitter. No cars explode.
There it is, thank you Rep Crockett. It’s there in Doug Lander, in Alex Padilla, in Melissa Hortman. I’d never heard of Melissa Hortman until she was assassinated, but she was there, ‘doing something’ for decades as an elected Democrat working against the constant destructive force the right. She led the efforts for police reform after George Floyd’s murder. She was a tireless advocate for gun safety laws, for reproductive freedom, for the environment.
Sherrilyn Ifill points out that Hortman “first came to prominence in Minnesota when she was a relatively new lawyer and won the largest ever housing discrimination award in the state’s history (at that time - 1997) on behalf of her client, an African American mother of three…. She possessed integrity and fearlessness. She was a leader of character and conviction.”
And for that, she, her husband, and the golden retriever she was raising as a service dog for veterans, lost their lives.
There are thousands of Melissa Hortmans out there right now, doing the work Democrats do, work that has, shockingly, required us to fight evil, while an enormous peanut gallery throws rotten tomatoes, and increasingly threatens and carries out the threat of deadly violence.
“Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together…. The best way to honor our parents' memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”—Sophie and Colin Hortman. They’re describing what George Eliot says at the end of Middlemarch: “The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Let’s visit Melissa Hortman’s tomb. She died needlessly, of right wing violence, while living out the life of Democratic service, doing the most good for the most people, day after day.
I’m not sure how or when this nation will overthrow tyranny— with last night’s bombing of Iran it has become even clearer that we’re fighting an international fascism that uses disinformation as one of its weapons. Fascism expert Tim Snyder has pointed out, Congress can easily pass laws to contain Trump’s lawless orders, if only a few Republicans could find the courage. Meanwhile, the nation needs to build a strong platform for Democrats to work from. We have wonderful allies, in the Judiciary, in Harvard and other great universities, even in the Pope. (Priests Arrive, ICE Melts.) Maybe we can use this horrifying moment as a springboard out of fascism and toward things like universal healthcare. That would require a grand coming together that holds back the right-wing anti-voting forces and results in a gush of Democrats into office. (See footnote 1 on the Velvet Revolution below.) It’s far from possible now, as far too many would rather blame than help. Democrats can, and always do, work for a better world for all. But we can’t overcome fascism alone. 2