Vote with radical love in 2024
Vote with radical love in 2024
Willfully abstaining from political hate is revolutionary
The media is salivating over the Trump–Biden rematch, but most Americans would rather see something else. A recent survey found that just 39% of adults have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump; only 36% for Joe Biden, and the other 26% have an unfavorable opinion of both. Opinions are unlikely to improve as each campaign tries to make us hate the other one and persuade voters they are the lesser of two evils.
When the Framers of the Constitution envisioned presidential elections, they pictured calm, rational thinkers selecting a candidate based on what was best for the United States as a whole. Unfortunately, this idea broke down fairly quickly since elections are an inherently adversarial process. Candidates square off, one emerges victorious, and the rest go home in defeat. Political parties find it advantageous to denigrate the other-color team, because elections are a zero-sum game.
(Read more about the ramifications of a zero-sum game in Third Parties Don’t Work.)
But what’s good for political parties is not good for the United States as a whole. Their poison has seeped into our daily lives and divided us into opposing tribes. Two-thirds of Republicans and Democrats now say the other-color team is dishonest and immoral. A 2020 survey found 38% would be upset if a child married a person of the other-color party. (That was before Trump’s election; I suspect it’s higher now.)
How do we, as a nation, turn things around? How can we make our elections about love instead of hate? Using Martin Luther King’s principles of nonviolence, the American Union offers a solution for 2024.
The American Union is a national union of swing voters—people willing to vote together for both Republicans and Democrats. Studies show nonviolent movements need 3.5% support to deliver political change, but because the US is so closely divided, controlling the outcome of national elections can be achieved with even less than that.
Before looking at what the American Union uses this leverage for, let’s examine how to de-escalate our electoral conflicts with radical love. In her book High Conflict, Amanda Ripley writes about feuds: “Over time, humiliation and hatred accumulate, making it feel impossible to abandon the conflict. The more people invest in a conflict, the harder it is to withdraw, even if it’s in their interest.”1
Many, many people are emotionally invested in seeing their political party destroy the other-color team. Since the United States is stuck with a two-party system, this is an impossible goal. The American Union offers a healthier goal; cooperation and collaboration to build a new political structure for the United States. To offer people a way to actively withdraw from the conflict, it uses an old tactic, rooted in American tradition as well as nonviolence: national days of fasting.
No country has ever risen without sacrifice
When the British announced a blockade of Boston Harbor as a consequence for the Boston Tea Party, Thomas Jefferson wanted to show Virginia’s solidarity with the patriots there. But how?
Jefferson drafted a resolution calling for a day of fasting on June 1, 1774. Among the goals were “to give us one Heart and one Mind”—establish a shared intention—and to inspire Parliament “with Wisdom, Moderation, and Justice.” It passed with with unanimous support in the Virginia legislature, and George Washington noted in his diary, “Went to church, fasted all day.”
A century and a half later, M.K. Gandhi began using the same tactic to unite his country against British rule, although it was now King George V instead of King George III. On April 6, 1919, the first national day of fasting, Gandhi addressed a crowd of 150,000: “No country has ever risen, no nation has ever been made without sacrifice, and we are trying an experiment of building up ourselves by self-sacrifice without resorting to violence in any shape or form. This is satyagraha.”
Satyagraha is the tactic Gandhi developed and used to win his nonviolent war of independence. Rather than destroy an opponent, satyagraha strives to convert an oppressor into a collaborator. The Dalai Lama describes it as a weapon “based on the power of truth and love …. in the nonviolent combat against injustice.”2 The American Union model acknowledges Republicans and Democrats will still win elections, but offers a collaboration, a redefining of the relationship to one of service of the people.
Radical love rejects the polarization and demonization that are dragging our country to the precipice of political violence. Instead, the American Union resurrects the Framers’ practice with a group fast each month on the 15th to establish a shared intention. This team-building approach uses the fast as a framework for transforming the conflict and steering the US back toward our constitutional duties. To fast is to willfully abstain for a period of time, and one of the symbolic aspects of the physical act of giving up food is abstaining from political partisanship.
It is a fast for peace.
What is the fast for peace?
The fast for peace answers a challenge Gandhi laid down in August 1947: “The 15th is the day of our trial. Observe a fast on that day.” The people of Kolkata, whose city had been bitterly divided by religious fighting, fasted together and became united in peace.
The monthly 24-hour fast itself is simple. Sometime after noon on the 14th and before noon on the 15th, finish eating. For the next 24 hours, drink all the water you like, but abstain from food, other beverages, and intoxicants. Dinner-to-dinner fasts are common. Those unsure if just drinking water for a day is safe for them should check with their doctor. Medical exemptions are available; Gandhi recommended taking fruit and/or fruit juice if needed.
In America, the power of fasting has often been wielded by individuals organizing for nonviolent social change; Martin Luther King Jr. fasted for days in a Selma jail cell, and Cesar Chavez fasted for weeks to galvanize the United Farm Workers behind nonviolence. Will you join the next 24-hour fast for peace on the 15th?
A shared sacrifice connecting many solutions
The fast for peace is an essential part of applying nonviolence to politics. Since the American Union is a constructive program, it also addresses other problems.
Personal change
A 24-hour fast has benefits for our physical and mental health. A 2020 survey found intermittent fasting (going without food for 16 or more hours daily) had become the most popular diet program among Americans. Other rewards include improved cardiovascular health and reduced insulin resistance. Like many healthy behaviors, routinely doing them with others can help maintain the habit.
The fast is a garden where many positive traits can grow. Putting an intention into our day encourages mindfulness and reflection, and fasting exercises self-control. Willingly accepting some discomfort strengthens our resiliency, so that we can better handle other situations which might make us uncomfortable. The knowledge we gain about our capabilities can’t be unlearned.
Cultural and social change
As individuals accrue benefits through regular fasting, these traits can spread out into the rest of the month and the larger culture, pushing back against other societal problems. Instant gratification is cultivated by businesses eager to tap into consumption impulses—fasting is delayed gratification. Greed, a desire to take more than one needs at the expense of others, is addressed by practicing taking less.
The “for peace” aspect drives change toward a specific social goal. The sacrifice helps seize the moral high ground, claiming the authority to reshape our political structure. One of the American Union’s planks is to end mass incarceration (65% of likely voters say this is important.) Each month, incarcerated people join the fast for peace from inside American prisons. This shared experience draws attention to their humanity and reminds us of every human being’s potential for self-improvement.
Political change
In short, the fast for peace offers a political truce on the 15th of every month: putting aside hatred or dislike of the other-color teams and accepting the cooperation of those who join in the fast. How much more could we accomplish—as a group, as a country, as a species—if we stopped fighting and worked together?
What makes the American Union fundamentally different from political parties is the election strategy. While parties fight to take votes from other-color teams, seeking power for themselves, the American Union works to give its key bloc of votes to candidates in order to decide the outcome. A national union of swing voters can create the positive pressure where politicians and parties must either recognize the benefits of cooperation over fighting or willingly accept electoral defeat.
The real purpose of politics is to set policy
It’s easy to forget with our 24/7 media cycle, but elections aren’t the real purpose of politics. Instead, politics is about setting policy. Unfortunately, the legislative process in the United States has become just as adversarial as our elections. Members of Congress routinely block legislation if passage might benefit the other-color party.
With radical love, the American Union does not fear seeing others succeed. Getting away from this dysfunctional model is essential to de-escalating politics as a whole. Instead of obsessing over WHO will win elections, we can focus on WHAT elected officials should be doing. More importantly, we can work to help them succeed (before the election, when our votes are critical) in accomplishing legislative change.
If we can agree on what what should be done, there’s little need to fight over who will do it. 93% of American voters say it is important for our leaders to focus on things that bring people together. According to 73% of voters, freedom, equality, and self-governance—our founding ideals—are good goals for bringing people together. Fortunately, the Framers left us an explicit list of five duties in the Preamble to the Constitution.
I’ve written elsewhere about how a people’s legislative assembly can crowdsource the work Congress is failing to do, guided by these five duties. (Within the assembly, the fast for peace serves to qualify delegates to vote in a given month, cooperatively seizing the moral authority to act.) By writing our own legislation—by the people, for the people—the American Union can avoid the political corruption and the influence of lobbyists in the Washington swamp.
This year’s legislative package contains dozens of popular policies and is summarized under three planks:
End poverty with unconditional basic income (UBI) of $1,400/month for adults, plus $467/kids; a public option for health insurance; and 18 weeks of paid family leave.
End mass incarceration by reevaluating our criminal justice with police reforms, prosecutorial reforms, and prison reforms.
End the endless wars by reducing military spending and improving our moral standing on the world stage.
(Read an exhaustive (exhausting?) list in The Preamble Is Our Mission Statement.)
It’s been said that fasting and compromise are two sides of the same coin—willingly giving something up. Compromise is a quality essential to politics, and like any legislative package working its way through Congress, no one is expected to like every single policy. However, as a union of voters, we all come out ahead by grouping our demands together.
This is how to vote with radical love in 2024: by being willing to help both Republicans and Democrats succeed in enacting this legislation before the election. An American Union of swing voters can reject an adversarial political system in favor of a collaborative one, and the fast for peace is a monthly demonstration of this commitment.
Nonviolence seeks win-win solutions, where all parties emerge with dignity, and this year’s legislative package is named for the two men who are essential to de-escalating the 2024 election: it is the Trump–Biden Peace Plan. As leaders of their parties, they have the ability to steer the country toward conflict or toward consensus. Their leadership can demonstrate to the world that the United States is still a functional nation and simultaneously offer a new model of collaborative democracy for the 21st century.
Who will fast for peace?
The group fast continues month after month: April 15, May 15, June 15, and so on, culminating on October 15—Muster Day. Three weeks before the general election, all of America will have to decide if they’re willing to pool their votes behind the demand of pre-election passage of the Trump–Biden Peace Plan. Since a 3.5% bloc of swing voters can decide the outcome of the election—which party controls the House, Senate, and Oval Office—this will build the creative tension Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about in his Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Nonviolent direct action seeks to … establish such creative tension that a community … is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored.
Essentially, Muster Day is a separate, public election to award the American Union’s 470 federal endorsements, and candidates will have to decide if they want to compete for the corresponding bloc of swing votes by taking up this demand through the fast for peace. Their public participation must be signaled on social media with #fastforpeace; failure to do so will be recorded as opposition to the Trump–Biden Peace Plan.
This creates a completely nonpartisan metric for voting. For Congress, instead of Republicans vs. Democrats, it is incumbents vs. challengers. Incumbents who support the Trump–Biden Peace Plan through the fast and enact it within one week are guaranteed the American Union endorsement. This is radical love; whatever they have done in the past can be forgiven, if they act before the election. However, should Congress refuse to pass the legislative package as submitted, their major-party challengers who took up the demand through the fast can get the endorsement.
If Congress is converted to service of the people through the moral pressure of the fast for peace, they can be reelected (regardless of party) and go down in history. If they are willing to keep 130 million Americans in or near poverty, two million behind bars, and trillion dollar military budgets, they can be kicked out of office, out of power, and replaced with their major-party challengers.
October 15 is the opportunity for Donald Trump and Joe Biden to come together and lead the nation in a national fast for peace, building the consensus around ending poverty, mass incarceration, and the endless wars in 2024. If one of the candidates refuses, and opposes the Trump–Biden Peace Plan, they will lose the White House, and see their party pushed into the minority of the House and Senate; the cooperative candidate wins the trifecta based on their commitment.
This requires courage from a critical mass of citizens because it potentially offers the election either of these candidates, should their opponent refuse to accept the American Union’s offer. Radical love is incompatible with a commitment to seeing someone fail.
(Read more details, including about how game theory is applied, in A General Strike Against Partisan Politics.)
The Trump–Biden Peace Plan will let these elder statesmen accomplish more together—before the election—than either could alone in four years of partisan bickering. Success, besides probably earning them a joint Nobel Peace Prize, will also be the signal for both to retire from politics. It’s a far more dignified outcome than risking a total blowout by rejecting the American Union’s offer.
The revolution will be novelized
A new political paradigm doesn’t fit into a soundbite, so I spent a year writing it out as a novel, expanding on many of the innovations described in this Substack. In Looking Backward from the Tricentennial, Julian West wakes fifty years in the future in a utopian United States. With new friends and old ones, he learns about the American Union, the fast for peace, and the duties of nonviolence; witnesses the workings of a people’s legislative assembly; and discovers how game theory coupled with unconditional love was used to pull off a nonviolent revolution in the present day.
You can support my work by buying an ebook ($2.99) or physical copy ($20.76) of the novel, but I need your help staging this revolution more than I need the few dollars I earn from a sale. If you’ll pledge to fast for 24 hours with the American Union on the 15th, recognizing it as a nonpartisan bargaining unit for the people of the United States in 2024 (even if you ultimately decide not to support the peace plan), I’ll send you a free digital copy.
While the story revolves around Julian West unlocking the mysteries of the new political system with new friends and old, two appendices detail the 2024 election strategy. Readers around the country are being called to action this election cycle… there’s a better way to organize for political power.
Conclusion - radical love has power
Since we all have to eat, the self-sacrifice of the fast for peace takes an intention, an assertion of free will, a voluntary commitment. One of the reasons the world’s major religious traditions incorporate fasting is that our strongest bonds form from associations we opt-in to. This is an opportunity for the citizens of the United States to upgrade our social contract and commit to looking out for each other as our constitutional duties prescribe.
We can end poverty.
We can end mass incarceration.
We can end the endless wars.
In a speech to striking sanitation workers in the last weeks of his life, Martin Luther King spoke of power.
We can all get more … organized together than we can apart. And this is the way we gain power. Power is the ability to achieve purpose, power is the ability to affect change, and we need power. What is power? Walter Reuther said once that “power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world—General Motors—say yes when it wants to say no.” That’s power.3
Even if Republicans and Democrats in Washington want to say no to these transformational demands—end poverty, end mass incarceration, end the endless wars—the American Union of swing voters can wield the electoral power to make them say yes.
Just as importantly, we can seize the moral power to make them say yes by rejecting the hatred intertwined with partisan politics.
Are you up for the challenge?
Ready for nonviolent revolution?
Join the American Union for 25¢ a day and a good-faith to vote together with radical love in 2024.
High Conflict: Why We Get Trapped and How We Get Out (Amanda Ripley, 2021) p. 132
A Call for Revolution: A Vision for the Future (HH the Dalai Lama, 2017) p. 116
All Labor has Dignity (Delivered March 18, 1968, in Memphis.)