Chapter 02 - The MInute Women's Raison D'Être
Jackie asked a question.
“Caroline, before you give me the overview, your email mentioned an opportunity to moonlight. You know that Congressional staffers aren’t paid a helluva lot and with the recent inflation I sure could use some more cash coming in. What were you thinking along those lines.”
“Jackie, my plan was to hire people I already was friendly with who would work in a moonlight capacity. In your case, you’re a speechwriter for the Congresswoman who is your boss. You’d be a document writer for us. My thinking is that all those who moonlighted for us would average about 15 hours per week, much of which would be remote work so I wouldn’t monitor it closely. When their regular job made extra demands on them, that would take priority. So some weeks it might be less than 15 hours. The key is that the work gets done and if one member of the group can’t do the work in a timely fashion, another picks up the slack.”
“And how much would it pay?”
“I’m thinking of a flat salary of $750 per week. There would be no benefits, as I assume that benefits would come from the regular job.”
“That sounds quite generous, $50 per hour. How are you going to afford to pay people that much?”
“The organization will be a non-profit NGO that is not affiliated with any political party. The hope is that fundraising will be a strong source of revenue, so that once the organization is fully functional the fundraising will be sufficient to pay the staff and cover all the other related costs.”
“Okay, where will the money come from while the organization is getting up to speed?”
“Did you know that I got a sizable inheritance after my dad passed away? I figure that I can pay for organization costs for somewhere between four to six months. That gives a time window in which the organization must hit some early targets. If it doesn’t do that, either the staff will have to continue as volunteers or we’ll have to shut down.”
“Your going to pay with your own money? That sounds crazy.”
“Maybe it is crazy, but that’s what I plan to do. I’m fully committed to this work and getting the staff to understand that might help them in making their own commitment.”
“I see. But these staff members will be your friends, right? Won’t they worry about your welfare in case things don’t go well?”
“I guarantee I won’t starve. And if push comes to shove, I can go back and be an accountant for a while. That’s not my preferred path, but if I really need money that possibility is my Plan B. There may be other ways that friends might worry about me - that I’ve gone over the deep end. But the money part shouldn’t be the cause for their concern.”
“All right, let me ask one more thing before you get into your briefing. Is there anyone in the background who is pulling the strings?”
“No, it’s all me. In the future I hope we’ll have a highly recognizable leader. I’ll explain that in the briefing. But for now, it’s me. Can I proceed with briefing?”
Jackie nodded. Then Caroline asked Jackie to respond to the following hypothetical.
“Let’s say that after all the melodrama regarding January 6 plays out, Trump is finally brought to justice. Will we continue to be engaged in this virtual civil war that we seem to be fighting now or will we return to something that seems more normal? Then, too, what will be the collateral damage from the Trump experience? Will we be stuck with that forever or might much of it be undone?”
Jackie looked down at the conference table to gather her thoughts. When she was ready she responded.
“Trump is such an asshole. I hope he rots in hell. I can’t believe that he’ll ever get the punishment that he truly deserves. But let me leave that for now. I think the answers to your questions are tied together. The virtual civil war will continue. The Supreme Court will see to that. They say the getting rid of Roe was just the beginning of their agenda. So we’ll be on the losing end of the stick in this virtual civil war for quite some time.”
“Thanks, Jackie. Here is one follow up question. Do you think what you expressed is a commonly held opinion, at least among Democratic voters?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Let’s say it is. The organization I’m founding is called The Minute Women. It’s aim is to confound those expectations, undo the appointments to the Supreme Court made under Trump, restore Roe, and create a foundation where those things can’t happen again.”
“The Minute Women, that’s cute. I like it. How is the organization going to achieve these goals you have set?”
“Let me ask a couple of questions before responding to your question. Do you think that Trump committed other crimes while in office before hatching the conspiracy around January 6? If so, do you think that Republicans in Congress knowingly enabled those crimes, either simultaneously to shield Trump from punishment, or beforehand, to create the preconditions that enabled these crimes?”
“That bastard Trump commits crimes all the time. It’s part of his nature as a psychopath. So there surely were other crimes. That Republicans in Congress knowingly aided and abetted in those crimes is an interesting proposition. I bet it’s true, but it might be hard to prove.”
“Let me make a little aside here. We’re talking informally now, as friends. Language tends to be a little looser in this setting, which is more relaxed. You’ve now cursed Trump a couple of times. I don’t blame you. When I worked for the Congressman, a lot of people in the office cursed Trump on a daily basis. But we in The Minute Women can’t do that in our official communications. We need to let our passions drive the work we do, but when we communicate about the work we must be dispassionate and professional.”
“Dispassionate is probably easy for you, Caroline, but might be harder for the others you hire who will be full of anger about the situation.”
“Why do you think it will be easy for me?”
“Well, you talk in a monotone much of the time.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that before. Let me explain about the tone in communication as part of the briefing. We’ll get to it in a bit.”
“Okay.” “Getting back to the flow of the argument, if you have a criminal President making nominations to the Supreme Court and those nominations get approved by Republican members of the Senate, who have also engaged in criminal activity in support of the President, what does that say about the appointments of these Justices? I’m going to answer that one myself. If the premises hold, then the appointments are illegitimate and should be nullified.”
“I’m beginning to see where this is going. But do you actually expect to try these people for their criminality in a court of law? Trump was impeached twice and acquitted by the Senate both times.”
“Your getting to the next part of the argument. The system is broken in that criminality by the participants can readily occur if a majority participate in such criminality. This means another organization outside of government must make the case and do so in the court of public opinion.”
“And that other organization is The Minute Women, right?”
“Yes, but it is not just a matter of making the case, like think tanks do. The arguments must be disseminated broadly and embraced by the vast majority of people who hear them. This includes not just Democrats but also Independents and Republicans who have tired of Trump. So, the reason for the dispassionate tone in making these arguments is to not alienate this broader audience ahead of time.”
“I get it. And the reason to have a leader of The Minute Women who is already highly recognizable is to reach this broader audience by leveraging this person’s fame and popularity, correct? Do you have somebody in mind to fill this role?
“My top candidate is Vice President Kamala Harris. She served in the Senate while Trump was President, so she should have an insider’s view of what we’re arguing. And she was Attorney General in California before she became a Senator. She’d be perfect as the one to prosecute this case. Of course, she’d have to give up being the Vice President to do this. This would be a very big ask. But I hold out hope that it might happen.”
“That would be great if you could pull it off. I take it that The Minute Women would need a record of success before that in order to attract someone of the Vice President’s stature. So there will be a need to reach a broad audience earlier on, even if the eventual audience is much larger.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“A related question occurs to me. Will The Minute Women have any male employees?”
“We’ll try to get the best person for the job regardless of gender, subject to these caveats. I already told you that I’m going to begin with people I already know and trust. The issue of trust is a biggie and I don’t want to bring on board someone who shines during the job interview but then doesn’t work well with everyone else after that. I’m pretty sure we won’t have those issues, at least initially. Then the leadership of the organization has to female because some of the core issues we will be fighting about are gender-related and we want the women’s view to prevail. We’re not neutral on that. This is most obvious in considering the goal to restore Roe, though it goes well beyond that.”
“I get it. Thanks. That was a well considered response. I’m sorry to say this because we haven’t gotten that far along, but I need to take a quick break. The water went right through me.”
“That’s okay. We’ve done the high level overview. The bathroom is right around the corner. We can resume when you’re ready.”
* * * * *
When they started up again, Caroline gave an outline of what they’d cover during the rest of the evening. First would be a description of the work that the writing staff would do along with how that work would become known to the public. Then there would be a discussion of obstacles the organization might face along with a set of possible mitigations. After that Jackie would be free to ask any additional questions she had. Once Caroline responded they would conclude. Caroline tried hard to keep this from sounding like a sell job, but she made sure Jackie understood that Caroline was hoping Jackie would sign up to work for The Minute Women at the conclusion.
Caroline described the writing task as producing easy-to-read white papers with a compelling narrative. At first these would be about well known events in our recent political history, before Trump was elected President and during his time as President, but reconsidered in the light of what is known at present. Implicitly, these white papers would be making the argument that Republicans in Congress acted in a criminal way in supporting Trump, but that would not be stated explicitly at the outset. It would be a conclusion that these white papers demonstrate.
Then there will be a specific white paper to address the following question. If the majority party in the Senate or the House acts in a criminal way, will the system discipline them so they are deterred from future behavior of the same sort? If the discipline is to come at the ballot box, will that work? When enough voters are supportive of that criminal behavior, then it won’t. This is why The Minute Women was formed, an organization that operates outside the system. Thereafter, this will become the stated mission of The Minute Women. Until then, however, the mission will be simply to reexamine the recent history in light of what’s known at present.
For each white paper that is made publicly available, there will be a formal press release as well as some informal contact with reporters to get them to read the white paper. Caroline indicated that she sometimes put out the press releases on behalf of the Congressman. This happened when his regular press secretary had to attend to her kids who were home rather than at school because of Covid. She got to know a few reporters as a result. Her selling point to them would be that there is over reporting about Trump, but under reporting about how Congress facilitated Trump’s foul play. She thought that would garner some attention for the early white papers.
If the press did write pieces that mentioned or featured the white papers, they now had a credible mechanism to reach the public. So early on it would be the press who do the heavy lifting for them to get the white papers before the eyes of the public. Later, after a group of regular readers has formed, with these readers visiting The Minute Women Website regularly in search of new items to read, it will be this group and their social network connections that broaden the distribution of the white papers and raise public awareness.
Once The Minute Women have achieved name recognition with the public, Caroline will hire some middle-right leaning journalists, who might get Republican insiders to open up about what they knew concerning Trump’s scheming in the Oval Office that has as of yet not been reported by the press. If these reporters can get former office holders, such as Paul Ryan, to open up in this way and maybe even current Members of Congress to do likewise, that will offer compelling information that the public will gobble up. But the focus won’t be so much on Trump’s misdoings as it would be on the questions: Could you have stopped him? If you could, why didn’t you?
Caroline paused at this juncture to ask Jackie whether she had any questions. Jackie told Caroline to continue with the presentation.
Caroline resumed by talking about possible stumbling blocks. The first one, evident from what she just spoke about, is that the press never writes a story about any of the white papers. Either they don’t consider them news worthy or they regard the white papers as insufficiently well researched or well argued or deficient in some other way. This would mark failure before the organization got well beyond the starting gate.
The second and third stumbling blocks would come if they actually were quite successful in disseminating the white papers. The second one concerned revenues. Donations might lag substantially and then the organization would face a revenue squeeze. Caroline also explained this another way. Since the white papers needed to be very high quality, it might take quite a while to produce one that was ready for public viewing. In this case the organization needed a greater volume of output to get a strong stream of donations flowing. Could they operate in an interim mode with insufficient revenues until that happened?
The third stumbling block concerned the likely response from far-right-wing groups when they realized that the white papers were on target and convincing the intended audience. Criticism of the ideas from more mainstream Conservatives would be perfectly acceptable. But threats of violence would not be and it might get dangerous for those who worked for The Minute Women as well as those in the public who identified with them overtly, such as by displaying some Minute Women tchotchke. Caroline said she wanted to be fighting a war of ideas. Actual violence was abhorrent and she wanted to avoid it if at all possible.
The last stumbling block had to do with the Members of Congress implicated by the analysis and the Supreme Court Justices who were appointed while Trump was President. The former might see their criminality as a badge rather than admitting their mea culpa. The latter, while understanding that they were the forbidden fruit in this unsavory process, might not feel that to make things right again they needed to resign.
Jackie remarked, “That’s quite a list. It seems The Minute Women will have mountains to climb.”
Caroline responded. “Yes, indeed. Let me consider possible mitigations, but also the likelihood of confronting the particular stumbling block.”
Caroline thought that the press would glom onto what The Minute Women produce, not ignore it. Maybe it wouldn’t happen immediately, but on this one Caroline wasn’t so concerned. Nevertheless, she did discuss potential other channels for getting the word out about the white papers. One way would be the academic route, contacting former professors who might find the arguments interesting or former classmates. There social networks might not be as large as one might like, but it could provide such an alternative path. The other would be going to people in Congress they knew and use them as the launch point. Caroline indicated she didn’t want do to this, because it would make the effort seem partisan, but if all else fails it could be tried.
On donations being slow to come in, Caroline gave a bit of a frivolous answer, recalling that old New Yorker cartoon, where a professor was at the board doing a long derivation, with the punchline and then a miracle occurred. She mentioned her prayer that if the white papers hit their mark some well-to-do donors would emerge and their money problems would vanish, just like that. Then she said that the Congressman she had worked for certainly knew some high rollers. Possibly, she might make a connection to a few of them through him, though she’d prefer that they discover her, not vice versa.
Regarding the threat of violence targeted at The Minute Women staff, Caroline said that particularly for the writing staff they might employ pseudonyms that were modifications of well known 18th century Americans such as Benjamina Franklin, Thomasina Paine, and Johanna Petra Zenger. If they went this route the group of writers as a whole would have to decide whether to display an image or not on the Website and if so how that would be done.
Here Jackie interrupted and asked, “What about you, Caroline? Will you use a pseudonym too?”
Caroline asserted, “No, I will use my real name. As the Acting CEO I need to convey that an actual person is in charge and we’re not just puppets of some other organization. My real picture needs to be put up as well. I’m on a few other Websites too, such as LinkedIn, so people will be able to see it’s me. If push comes to shove we’ll have to take other security measures to protect ourselves.”
“Okay, though it is frightening to think about.”
“Yes, it is.”
Caroline also considered violence targeted at their supporters. On this she remarked that there may need to be some warnings issued about the threat, so the supporters were aware. But once so aware it was their responsibility to protect themselves or accept that violence might occur. Caroline argued that in this respect it was no different from #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Jackie nodded in agreement.
Then, talking about Members of Congress and those recent Supreme Court Justices not taking the hint, Caroline said other pressure will need to be applied.
Again Jackie interrupted. “What other pressure?”
Caroline gave a two-fold response. She said she had read Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience during the time when she was rehabilitating herself. Possibly, they might try something in this vein, targeted at specific individuals. But she expected it would be a long ordeal and in the current quasi-militarized environment it might be ineffective. Then Caroline said something that Jackie hadn’t yet considered. The arguments made by The Minute Woman might empower other groups to act in a way that would apply pressure without any knowledge by us that it was happening. There would be no way to control that. Then Caroline tried to inject some levity into this rather somber subject. She asked whether hacking emails was still in vogue these days and might some very embarrassing information be revealed if those that were hacked were highly placed Republicans? She said this was out of her league, but the thought had crossed her mind.
* * * * *
Caroline asked Jackie, “Do you have any other questions?”
“Jackie replied, “No, I’m good.”
“Are you ready to sign up?”
“I’d like to think about it for a while and maybe talk to a few people. It’s getting late, I haven’t had dinner yet, and I have to be at work tomorrow. Let me say goodbye for now and I’ll be in touch in a couple of days.”
They hugged again, though afterward Jackie saw that Caroline looked a bit disappointed. Jackie was sorry about that. She actually was incredibly impressed with the thoughtful presentation. But as a speechwriter for the Congresswoman, she had grown quite attached to her writing partner there and wanted to know if she could convince her to join The Minute Women, so they could continue to work together in this new setting. Not knowing that at the time, she thought the responsible thing was to delay her decision until she did know for sure.
Caroline decided to wait on contacting other friends who were speechwriters until she heard back from Jackie.
“Caroline, before you give me the overview, your email mentioned an opportunity to moonlight. You know that Congressional staffers aren’t paid a helluva lot and with the recent inflation I sure could use some more cash coming in. What were you thinking along those lines.”
“Jackie, my plan was to hire people I already was friendly with who would work in a moonlight capacity. In your case, you’re a speechwriter for the Congresswoman who is your boss. You’d be a document writer for us. My thinking is that all those who moonlighted for us would average about 15 hours per week, much of which would be remote work so I wouldn’t monitor it closely. When their regular job made extra demands on them, that would take priority. So some weeks it might be less than 15 hours. The key is that the work gets done and if one member of the group can’t do the work in a timely fashion, another picks up the slack.”
“And how much would it pay?”
“I’m thinking of a flat salary of $750 per week. There would be no benefits, as I assume that benefits would come from the regular job.”
“That sounds quite generous, $50 per hour. How are you going to afford to pay people that much?”
“The organization will be a non-profit NGO that is not affiliated with any political party. The hope is that fundraising will be a strong source of revenue, so that once the organization is fully functional the fundraising will be sufficient to pay the staff and cover all the other related costs.”
“Okay, where will the money come from while the organization is getting up to speed?”
“Did you know that I got a sizable inheritance after my dad passed away? I figure that I can pay for organization costs for somewhere between four to six months. That gives a time window in which the organization must hit some early targets. If it doesn’t do that, either the staff will have to continue as volunteers or we’ll have to shut down.”
“Your going to pay with your own money? That sounds crazy.”
“Maybe it is crazy, but that’s what I plan to do. I’m fully committed to this work and getting the staff to understand that might help them in making their own commitment.”
“I see. But these staff members will be your friends, right? Won’t they worry about your welfare in case things don’t go well?”
“I guarantee I won’t starve. And if push comes to shove, I can go back and be an accountant for a while. That’s not my preferred path, but if I really need money that possibility is my Plan B. There may be other ways that friends might worry about me - that I’ve gone over the deep end. But the money part shouldn’t be the cause for their concern.”
“All right, let me ask one more thing before you get into your briefing. Is there anyone in the background who is pulling the strings?”
“No, it’s all me. In the future I hope we’ll have a highly recognizable leader. I’ll explain that in the briefing. But for now, it’s me. Can I proceed with briefing?”
Jackie nodded. Then Caroline asked Jackie to respond to the following hypothetical.
“Let’s say that after all the melodrama regarding January 6 plays out, Trump is finally brought to justice. Will we continue to be engaged in this virtual civil war that we seem to be fighting now or will we return to something that seems more normal? Then, too, what will be the collateral damage from the Trump experience? Will we be stuck with that forever or might much of it be undone?”
Jackie looked down at the conference table to gather her thoughts. When she was ready she responded.
“Trump is such an asshole. I hope he rots in hell. I can’t believe that he’ll ever get the punishment that he truly deserves. But let me leave that for now. I think the answers to your questions are tied together. The virtual civil war will continue. The Supreme Court will see to that. They say the getting rid of Roe was just the beginning of their agenda. So we’ll be on the losing end of the stick in this virtual civil war for quite some time.”
“Thanks, Jackie. Here is one follow up question. Do you think what you expressed is a commonly held opinion, at least among Democratic voters?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Let’s say it is. The organization I’m founding is called The Minute Women. It’s aim is to confound those expectations, undo the appointments to the Supreme Court made under Trump, restore Roe, and create a foundation where those things can’t happen again.”
“The Minute Women, that’s cute. I like it. How is the organization going to achieve these goals you have set?”
“Let me ask a couple of questions before responding to your question. Do you think that Trump committed other crimes while in office before hatching the conspiracy around January 6? If so, do you think that Republicans in Congress knowingly enabled those crimes, either simultaneously to shield Trump from punishment, or beforehand, to create the preconditions that enabled these crimes?”
“That bastard Trump commits crimes all the time. It’s part of his nature as a psychopath. So there surely were other crimes. That Republicans in Congress knowingly aided and abetted in those crimes is an interesting proposition. I bet it’s true, but it might be hard to prove.”
“Let me make a little aside here. We’re talking informally now, as friends. Language tends to be a little looser in this setting, which is more relaxed. You’ve now cursed Trump a couple of times. I don’t blame you. When I worked for the Congressman, a lot of people in the office cursed Trump on a daily basis. But we in The Minute Women can’t do that in our official communications. We need to let our passions drive the work we do, but when we communicate about the work we must be dispassionate and professional.”
“Dispassionate is probably easy for you, Caroline, but might be harder for the others you hire who will be full of anger about the situation.”
“Why do you think it will be easy for me?”
“Well, you talk in a monotone much of the time.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that before. Let me explain about the tone in communication as part of the briefing. We’ll get to it in a bit.”
“Okay.” “Getting back to the flow of the argument, if you have a criminal President making nominations to the Supreme Court and those nominations get approved by Republican members of the Senate, who have also engaged in criminal activity in support of the President, what does that say about the appointments of these Justices? I’m going to answer that one myself. If the premises hold, then the appointments are illegitimate and should be nullified.”
“I’m beginning to see where this is going. But do you actually expect to try these people for their criminality in a court of law? Trump was impeached twice and acquitted by the Senate both times.”
“Your getting to the next part of the argument. The system is broken in that criminality by the participants can readily occur if a majority participate in such criminality. This means another organization outside of government must make the case and do so in the court of public opinion.”
“And that other organization is The Minute Women, right?”
“Yes, but it is not just a matter of making the case, like think tanks do. The arguments must be disseminated broadly and embraced by the vast majority of people who hear them. This includes not just Democrats but also Independents and Republicans who have tired of Trump. So, the reason for the dispassionate tone in making these arguments is to not alienate this broader audience ahead of time.”
“I get it. And the reason to have a leader of The Minute Women who is already highly recognizable is to reach this broader audience by leveraging this person’s fame and popularity, correct? Do you have somebody in mind to fill this role?
“My top candidate is Vice President Kamala Harris. She served in the Senate while Trump was President, so she should have an insider’s view of what we’re arguing. And she was Attorney General in California before she became a Senator. She’d be perfect as the one to prosecute this case. Of course, she’d have to give up being the Vice President to do this. This would be a very big ask. But I hold out hope that it might happen.”
“That would be great if you could pull it off. I take it that The Minute Women would need a record of success before that in order to attract someone of the Vice President’s stature. So there will be a need to reach a broad audience earlier on, even if the eventual audience is much larger.”
“That’s exactly right.”
“A related question occurs to me. Will The Minute Women have any male employees?”
“We’ll try to get the best person for the job regardless of gender, subject to these caveats. I already told you that I’m going to begin with people I already know and trust. The issue of trust is a biggie and I don’t want to bring on board someone who shines during the job interview but then doesn’t work well with everyone else after that. I’m pretty sure we won’t have those issues, at least initially. Then the leadership of the organization has to female because some of the core issues we will be fighting about are gender-related and we want the women’s view to prevail. We’re not neutral on that. This is most obvious in considering the goal to restore Roe, though it goes well beyond that.”
“I get it. Thanks. That was a well considered response. I’m sorry to say this because we haven’t gotten that far along, but I need to take a quick break. The water went right through me.”
“That’s okay. We’ve done the high level overview. The bathroom is right around the corner. We can resume when you’re ready.”
* * * * *
When they started up again, Caroline gave an outline of what they’d cover during the rest of the evening. First would be a description of the work that the writing staff would do along with how that work would become known to the public. Then there would be a discussion of obstacles the organization might face along with a set of possible mitigations. After that Jackie would be free to ask any additional questions she had. Once Caroline responded they would conclude. Caroline tried hard to keep this from sounding like a sell job, but she made sure Jackie understood that Caroline was hoping Jackie would sign up to work for The Minute Women at the conclusion.
Caroline described the writing task as producing easy-to-read white papers with a compelling narrative. At first these would be about well known events in our recent political history, before Trump was elected President and during his time as President, but reconsidered in the light of what is known at present. Implicitly, these white papers would be making the argument that Republicans in Congress acted in a criminal way in supporting Trump, but that would not be stated explicitly at the outset. It would be a conclusion that these white papers demonstrate.
Then there will be a specific white paper to address the following question. If the majority party in the Senate or the House acts in a criminal way, will the system discipline them so they are deterred from future behavior of the same sort? If the discipline is to come at the ballot box, will that work? When enough voters are supportive of that criminal behavior, then it won’t. This is why The Minute Women was formed, an organization that operates outside the system. Thereafter, this will become the stated mission of The Minute Women. Until then, however, the mission will be simply to reexamine the recent history in light of what’s known at present.
For each white paper that is made publicly available, there will be a formal press release as well as some informal contact with reporters to get them to read the white paper. Caroline indicated that she sometimes put out the press releases on behalf of the Congressman. This happened when his regular press secretary had to attend to her kids who were home rather than at school because of Covid. She got to know a few reporters as a result. Her selling point to them would be that there is over reporting about Trump, but under reporting about how Congress facilitated Trump’s foul play. She thought that would garner some attention for the early white papers.
If the press did write pieces that mentioned or featured the white papers, they now had a credible mechanism to reach the public. So early on it would be the press who do the heavy lifting for them to get the white papers before the eyes of the public. Later, after a group of regular readers has formed, with these readers visiting The Minute Women Website regularly in search of new items to read, it will be this group and their social network connections that broaden the distribution of the white papers and raise public awareness.
Once The Minute Women have achieved name recognition with the public, Caroline will hire some middle-right leaning journalists, who might get Republican insiders to open up about what they knew concerning Trump’s scheming in the Oval Office that has as of yet not been reported by the press. If these reporters can get former office holders, such as Paul Ryan, to open up in this way and maybe even current Members of Congress to do likewise, that will offer compelling information that the public will gobble up. But the focus won’t be so much on Trump’s misdoings as it would be on the questions: Could you have stopped him? If you could, why didn’t you?
Caroline paused at this juncture to ask Jackie whether she had any questions. Jackie told Caroline to continue with the presentation.
Caroline resumed by talking about possible stumbling blocks. The first one, evident from what she just spoke about, is that the press never writes a story about any of the white papers. Either they don’t consider them news worthy or they regard the white papers as insufficiently well researched or well argued or deficient in some other way. This would mark failure before the organization got well beyond the starting gate.
The second and third stumbling blocks would come if they actually were quite successful in disseminating the white papers. The second one concerned revenues. Donations might lag substantially and then the organization would face a revenue squeeze. Caroline also explained this another way. Since the white papers needed to be very high quality, it might take quite a while to produce one that was ready for public viewing. In this case the organization needed a greater volume of output to get a strong stream of donations flowing. Could they operate in an interim mode with insufficient revenues until that happened?
The third stumbling block concerned the likely response from far-right-wing groups when they realized that the white papers were on target and convincing the intended audience. Criticism of the ideas from more mainstream Conservatives would be perfectly acceptable. But threats of violence would not be and it might get dangerous for those who worked for The Minute Women as well as those in the public who identified with them overtly, such as by displaying some Minute Women tchotchke. Caroline said she wanted to be fighting a war of ideas. Actual violence was abhorrent and she wanted to avoid it if at all possible.
The last stumbling block had to do with the Members of Congress implicated by the analysis and the Supreme Court Justices who were appointed while Trump was President. The former might see their criminality as a badge rather than admitting their mea culpa. The latter, while understanding that they were the forbidden fruit in this unsavory process, might not feel that to make things right again they needed to resign.
Jackie remarked, “That’s quite a list. It seems The Minute Women will have mountains to climb.”
Caroline responded. “Yes, indeed. Let me consider possible mitigations, but also the likelihood of confronting the particular stumbling block.”
Caroline thought that the press would glom onto what The Minute Women produce, not ignore it. Maybe it wouldn’t happen immediately, but on this one Caroline wasn’t so concerned. Nevertheless, she did discuss potential other channels for getting the word out about the white papers. One way would be the academic route, contacting former professors who might find the arguments interesting or former classmates. There social networks might not be as large as one might like, but it could provide such an alternative path. The other would be going to people in Congress they knew and use them as the launch point. Caroline indicated she didn’t want do to this, because it would make the effort seem partisan, but if all else fails it could be tried.
On donations being slow to come in, Caroline gave a bit of a frivolous answer, recalling that old New Yorker cartoon, where a professor was at the board doing a long derivation, with the punchline and then a miracle occurred. She mentioned her prayer that if the white papers hit their mark some well-to-do donors would emerge and their money problems would vanish, just like that. Then she said that the Congressman she had worked for certainly knew some high rollers. Possibly, she might make a connection to a few of them through him, though she’d prefer that they discover her, not vice versa.
Regarding the threat of violence targeted at The Minute Women staff, Caroline said that particularly for the writing staff they might employ pseudonyms that were modifications of well known 18th century Americans such as Benjamina Franklin, Thomasina Paine, and Johanna Petra Zenger. If they went this route the group of writers as a whole would have to decide whether to display an image or not on the Website and if so how that would be done.
Here Jackie interrupted and asked, “What about you, Caroline? Will you use a pseudonym too?”
Caroline asserted, “No, I will use my real name. As the Acting CEO I need to convey that an actual person is in charge and we’re not just puppets of some other organization. My real picture needs to be put up as well. I’m on a few other Websites too, such as LinkedIn, so people will be able to see it’s me. If push comes to shove we’ll have to take other security measures to protect ourselves.”
“Okay, though it is frightening to think about.”
“Yes, it is.”
Caroline also considered violence targeted at their supporters. On this she remarked that there may need to be some warnings issued about the threat, so the supporters were aware. But once so aware it was their responsibility to protect themselves or accept that violence might occur. Caroline argued that in this respect it was no different from #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. Jackie nodded in agreement.
Then, talking about Members of Congress and those recent Supreme Court Justices not taking the hint, Caroline said other pressure will need to be applied.
Again Jackie interrupted. “What other pressure?”
Caroline gave a two-fold response. She said she had read Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience during the time when she was rehabilitating herself. Possibly, they might try something in this vein, targeted at specific individuals. But she expected it would be a long ordeal and in the current quasi-militarized environment it might be ineffective. Then Caroline said something that Jackie hadn’t yet considered. The arguments made by The Minute Woman might empower other groups to act in a way that would apply pressure without any knowledge by us that it was happening. There would be no way to control that. Then Caroline tried to inject some levity into this rather somber subject. She asked whether hacking emails was still in vogue these days and might some very embarrassing information be revealed if those that were hacked were highly placed Republicans? She said this was out of her league, but the thought had crossed her mind.
* * * * *
Caroline asked Jackie, “Do you have any other questions?”
“Jackie replied, “No, I’m good.”
“Are you ready to sign up?”
“I’d like to think about it for a while and maybe talk to a few people. It’s getting late, I haven’t had dinner yet, and I have to be at work tomorrow. Let me say goodbye for now and I’ll be in touch in a couple of days.”
They hugged again, though afterward Jackie saw that Caroline looked a bit disappointed. Jackie was sorry about that. She actually was incredibly impressed with the thoughtful presentation. But as a speechwriter for the Congresswoman, she had grown quite attached to her writing partner there and wanted to know if she could convince her to join The Minute Women, so they could continue to work together in this new setting. Not knowing that at the time, she thought the responsible thing was to delay her decision until she did know for sure.
Caroline decided to wait on contacting other friends who were speechwriters until she heard back from Jackie.
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