If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he would be letting 44.46 know that he paid for his microphone with years of public service while Trump was grasping at fame with other peoples’ money and, with a cock of his head and a “there you go again,” deposit him in the nearest sand trap, water hazard, or federal court.  The patron saint of conservatives would be a founding member of the Never Trumpers, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to change their drug or drink of choice to reality, no matter how well they claim to have known this least scrutable of modern leaders.

Reagan was the most fiercely anti-Soviet president we ever had, willing to bear any deficit, spend every dollar to crush Russia both militarily and economically.  Kissing up to the likes of Vladimir Putin even once, as Trump has done ad nauseam, would make him, at minimum, throw up a little in his mouth. Reagan embraced every alliance and responsibility on the world stage that Trump has run away from.  Reagan welcomed immigrants–in his farewell address, he said he wanted an America “open to anyone with the will and heart to get here”–granted a sweeping amnesty to those here illegally, and no, he never regretted it.  Trump, who opposed Reagan’s immigration bill, has done nothing but demonize the huddled masses, literally from the first sentences of his announcement speech, and has issued executive orders and new regulations against them with Naziesque regularity and fecundity.

It’s hard to imagine the man who famously urged Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall would support one on our southern border, nor ridiculously claim that 3M+ “illegals” voted for his opponent, denying him a popular vote victory.  It’s true that he had some ambivalence about voting rights, but he wanted the Voting Rights Act to apply to all 50 states (which frankly, it should) and signed a 25 year extension to it early in his first term. Meanwhile, Trump has presided over the greatest effort to prevent our citizens from voting and having those votes counted since Jim Crow.

Yes, tax cuts were a top priority for Reagan when he was first sworn in–at the time, the marginal tax rate on incomes over $108,000 was 70%–but a year after his signature tax cut legislation, he took a third of it back, and two years later signed an increase in the payroll tax; taken together these bills resulted in the largest tax increase ever in peacetime.  Would a president who had to fight for political survival against double-digit interest rates really have been supportive of a tax cut like Trump’s in an economy that had been growing for years, especially after the previous Republican president had already layered another major tax cut on top of his? Highly doubtful–unlike today’s Republicans, Reagan clearly didn’t believe tax cuts for the wealthy cure all ills.

And like Trump, Reagan favored reducing regulations, but that decidedly didn’t mean gutting them as Trump has done, especially regulations that protect the environment.  An avid outdoorsman, Reagan proclaimed “protecting the environment should never be a partisan issue.”  Under his administration, new lead production was virtually eliminated, carbon monoxide was reduced by 25%, and particulate pollution by 40%.  He pushed for, and signed, the Montreal Protocol phasing out chlorofluorocarbons that were contributing to both ozone depletion and climate change, and did the initial work on the “cap and trade” system to control acid rain that HW Bush implemented with great success.  Meanwhile, Trump has pursued environmental destruction with the same zeal as he has immigrants.

Above all, Reagan would have been repulsed by the way Trump has handled himself as president. Just as he preferred more nuanced and sophisticated solutions than walls and command-and-control regulations in his policies, Reagan avidly worked across the aisle, lived a life of rectitude, and embodied what our moms told us about what to say when we couldn’t think of anything nice.  He would have been appalled by Trump’s whining, pettiness, and relentless spew of personal attacks. Perhaps Reagan’s most important contribution as president was his optimism, restoring faith in a nation that, after Vietnam, Watergate, and all that followed, had stopped believing in itself.  No one calling himself our leader has ever been as dark and negative as Trump. Reagan believed our nation was “the shining city upon a hill” that Jesus spoke of; Trump launched his presidency with an inaugural address about “American carnage,” and that was before he’d begun creating it.

To be clear, many of the problems we face today had their origins or acceleration in the 1980’s, but if Reagan were alive today, he, and not Fox News, would be keeping Trump up at night, wondering when the next soft-spoken eviceration was going to come, knowing that there was no spew, no nickname that was going to stick to the OG Teflon president.  But sadly–yes sadly–he’s no longer with us, which leaves it up to we, the people to put Trump in his place, once and for all.  We propose to do so inspired by Ronald–and even more so, Nancy–Reagan’s most famous power-to-the-people/you’re on your own initiative, their “Just Say No” campaign against drug abuse.

Why? Because Donald Trump and everything about him constitutes a dangerously addictive toxin that distorts all reality, afflicting upwards of 40% of our fellow citizens.  Like the Reagans, we may not be able to help all–or many–of those already addicted, but perhaps we can stop more from joining their ranks before it’s too late.  When an addict is in recovery, it’s often simple truths long forgotten that pave the way back to the light.  Trump’s mechanism of action is to deluge, blanket, and submerge our country with lie upon lie upon lie, endlessly repeated like addiction’s daily cycle, always with new, even more mortifying twists. Our campaign’s aim is to physically take back the world he’s made unrecognizable by doing some interventionist blanketing of our own with a few of those simple–or as simple as we can make them–real realities.  Here’s how it works.

The Campaign

Our weapon of choice is stickers, lots and lots of stickers, a blizzard of them, everywhere you turn, each one negating one or more of the tens of thousands of lies he tells most frequently, or affirming truths he doesn’t want people to hear.  Here are a few examples, all in red, white, and blue:

You can download a full set of printable sheets here, mix & match your own (includes a PSD layered template, fonts), click on any of the images below to get a printable for the stickers on each sheet, and/or send us more.  Once you’ve downloaded them, there are a couple of ways you can make them real:

• Order sticker paper online (or buy it in a store), print out the sheets on a laser (not inkjet) printer, cut sheets into individual stickers, and start slapping them up.
• Take the files to a print shop and have them create the stickers for you.  FedEx/Kinko’s, UPS, Staples, Vistaprint, Walgreen’s, Office Depot, CVS, and Office Max are among the many chains that provide this service, usually overnight (though you should call your local franchisee(s) in advance to make sure they’re offering it)

You could, of course, also just use them as memes and send them around online, but here’s why we think stickers are better:

Why Stickers?

• Making, paying for, and putting up stickers shows a depth of commitment (in the face of potential opposition–only put them up where you have a right or permission to do so) that sending free memes from the comfort of your home doesn’t.
• This level of commitment can strengthen the resolve of others and demoralize opponents.  Democrats now believe that one of the critical mistakes they made in 2016 was allowing Trump to dominate the low-tech real estate of yard signs in swing states, leaving potential Democratic voters feeling isolated and discouraged.
• The current pandemic environment has eliminated many other traditional critical ways for voters to show support in the closing days of a campaign.
• The Trump campaign, well aware of the importance of signage, has responded in typical GOP fashion, conducting massive nightly campaigns to pull up and remove Biden signs.
• Stickers are more aggressive, more in-your-face than yard signs.  They aren’t limited to yards, they can be placed in any number of locations (even on signs for the sign stealers) where they can’t just be tuned out as background blur as potential voters make their way through their quotidian routines
• Stickers are a lot harder to steal (or rather, peel), especially if they proliferate en masse, which we’re giving you the power to make happen.
• For the cost of one yard sign, you can print and distribute–or have printed and cut for you–dozens of these little valentines to democracy.
• Mass proliferation of sticker-based support is not only helpful in the lead-up to voting, but may prove vital after 11/3 as a continual show of force, a 24/7 form of protest all over the country, if, as expected, the Trump campaign tries to delegitimize the rightful winner of the election.

Download the full set of sheets

Mix, match, make your own (sheets, that is–includes PSD layered template, fonts)

Send us ideas for more

Sheet 1 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality)

Sheet 2 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality)

Sheet 3 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality)

Sheet 4 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality)

Sheet 5 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality)

Sheet 6 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality) Because sometimes you have to say yes.

Sheet 6 (Thumbnail–click on it to download–actual art higher quality) The next sheet in progress (all these have been added to the compilations)–thanks much for the ideas–keep’em coming! 🙂

Download the full set of sheets

Mix, match, make your own (sheets, that is–includes PSD layered template, fonts)

Send us ideas for more