Do you even Know what a Commie is? You Moron.

They need to unite. Even I’ve been known to say it lately, and in some way I’ll probably keep saying it: find your voice. Get together, form a band, be the Monkees.

The Monkees, why the Monkees, you ask?

Easy. They didn’t start off as singers. They hadn’t decided to get together in a garage. Heck, they were young actors put together for a sitcom, meant to appeal to teenyboppers, sell airtime and ads. Make money. And some young exec said to himself, “Self, what if they sang a song?” So the network had them sing a song. Among them, “Last Train to Clarksville.” What does Clarksville have to do with any of this? Nothing. Just a good opening.

At first, they didn’t even play the instruments. But isn’t that called politics?

So I wander, The Wanderer? No, that was Dion. Back to it: they need to unite, find a voice. Yes, unite. Yes, find a voice. But let me add a few words to that. They need to get together and speak the same language, but not say the same words.

Why does everything have to revolve around he-said, she-said? I just saw where Mamdani wants a few city-owned grocery stores in the poor parts of town, and the first thing the news did was jump to failed attempts tried before. Okay, some failed. Some didn’t. And I didn’t hear Mamdani say every grocery store in the nation needs to be state-owned. Did you?

Where I live, in the fall, we have local farmers markets. It works because we have local farms — imagine that. We grow tomatoes in our small backyard and still buy a basket of some of the greatest tomatoes you’ve ever seen, if you live in a city. Way too much to eat in a salad, or sliced for a burger. Oh, so sweet and tasty. Getting hungry.

I’ve dried them, soaked them in olive oil, made sauces and salsas galore. But we’ve finally settled on homemade tomato soup. Never buy Campbell’s again. Freezes well. And come a cold winter’s day, California Dreamin’, did I tell you I grew up on a SoCal beach? soup, alongside a BLT. Oh my. That’s non-partisan at its best.

But if my wife were Sue, I’d say I was Running Around again.

My aim here is that the voice needs to be consistent on core values, but tailored to the audience. It can still stand up, because it’s true: affordable food and groceries in a small rural town means exactly the same thing as affordable food in an affluent major city, as well as in a hardship community. But the methods of achieving it are different. The message can be the same, affordable groceries, but the solutions are not one-size-fits-all. And the message has to say that too.

One example: in my area we have a commercial chain of privately owned outlets called Grocery Outlet, usually found in college towns. They specialize in bulk-buying slow sellers from distributors at a discount, then selling with that discount passed along. Each store is privately owned, a franchise.

My message: RINO, Democratic Socialist, Democrat, or Independent, with or without an uppercase “I”, we may really all want the same thing in the end. But the solutions will be different from each other, because they have to be.

When someone calls you a communist, a radical, or worse, maybe the retort, and there should be a retort, is: “No, I’m not the label you just called me. I’m a representative of Rural Michigan, looking to provide my constituents the best services I can.” Feel free to replace “rural” and “Michigan” with whatever’s appropriate to you.

How about we ship snowshoes to Mar-a-Lago?

After all, Isn’t that what MAGA is trying to do? Make us all wear the same same thing, the same size? Doesn’t sound like freedom to me.