Dear USA

Dear USA,

This is atrocious.

The Texas Republican Party official platform has been updated, and it is a disgusting, contemptible, hateful mess.

It's also very real.  This is the real and current platform of politically active adults in a major party in a well-populated state.  This was written and directed by people with a lot of influence.

This is not the fringe.  This is the base.

It can be hard to admit how very, extensively hateful people in our country can be.  Not just hateful, hateful and powerful and numerous.  This is the Texas Republican Party.  The last president we had, whom we endured for two terms, was the Governor of Texas before he became president.

We have to take this seriously.  Gross and scary and hateful as their platform is, it's not unique.  It's not rare.  It's not unusual.  It is very, very normal and very, very mainstream.

If you needed a wake-up call, let this be it.  Get involved now.  Speak up, vote, donate, volunteer, agitate.

I want these ideas to be the fading roars of dinosaurs soon to be extinct.  I want this platform to be little more than a laughable footnote of history.  I'm counting on the notion that you do, too.

With love,
Frank Lee