Treading Water

I stood in line to vote today. About 45 minutes or so. I’ve voted in nearly every election since I turned 18. I might have missed a couple when I was in college, but that’s pretty much it. Each time I’ve gone, I’ve felt a sense of civic pride, that voting was a joyous ceremony of citizenship, an obligation and a responsibility and a way to move the U.S. forward. Today as I stood in that queue, the chilly wind whipping leaves through the air, my attitude was somewhat different.

I didn’t feel as if I was voting “for” something. I felt I was only voting against something, that "something" being Mr. Trump and the GOP agenda. That is disturbing and sad. I felt like I was merely voting to avoid drowning. Treading water, so it seems. The retrograde Make America Great Again crusade is a con game to strip the rights, livelihoods and, frighteningly, even the very lives from groups outside of the one in power. The Congressional GOP junta is salivating over retaining control of both houses of Congress as they seek to fundamentally realign the concept of The General Welfare as listed in the Preamble and later refined during FDR’s tenure.

I filled in the circles on my ballot today to vote my displeasure in the current state of affairs, to add my voice to the growing chorus, saying louder and louder each day “We will not allow this to go on any longer. We demand that we devolve no further!” I didn’t vote in the hope of a new dawn, but in the determination to push back the darkness. This makes my heart and soul heavy. We should be looking for ways to make the lives of all those in our country better, not struggling to keep them from getting worse.

The GOP agenda points towards the lessening of the common good and general welfare for the benefit of those who hold power. The growing income and wealth inequality makes this clear. Growing corporate profits and executive pay and any worker wage gains not keeping up with increases in the costs of housing, medical care, education and more lends credence to this. Making America Great Again, indeed, but for only a small fraction of the populous.

The Democrat agenda, however, is nearly as troubling. The main message in the 2016 and 2018 campaigns was not much beyond, “Hey, we’re not the guy with the funny hair and orange skin. Vote for us!” Not too long ago, the Democrats might have laid out a plan detailing how they would work to make the lives of their constituents better, pledging to make the economy more equitable as well as being the defenders of the civil rights of all. There are a few voices in the wilderness, visioning a better world—affordable education, healthcare as a basic right, building infrastructure, sane military spending, to name a few of these ideas. These courageous outliers are, however, attacked and derided by the leadership of their own party as well as the opposition. The leadership of the Democrats as well as many of its members seem to be fine settling back into the status quo of the post-2008, pre-political Trump world if they get a chance. Here’s a little hint—we’re past that. Deal with the here and now.

And that, my friends, is where we all come in. Whatever the outcome of today’s election—either a big blue wave, a little trickle or ((shudder)) GOP domination—we need to begin to vision and think and dream about what we want in this country. We need to open our eyes and our ears and our hearts and our minds and pay attention to what is happening around us. We need to wake up out of our solipsistic stupor and realize that we are better unified than only worrying about ourselves and what we feel as our places of privilege being threatened. We need to realize who our enemies really are. They are not the few thousand refugees south of our border, fleeing unimaginable violence and destitution in hopes of making a better life in a place that has, until recently, offered such opportunities. Our enemies are not members of the LGBTQI community, nor Muslims, nor Jews, nor African Americans, nor Hispanics, nor the poor, nor anyone or any group that we are currently being instructed to “other” in right wing media or in campaign rallies. The U.S. has been down this road before in several embarrassing historic episodes.

Let us repudiate the identity politics that has been foisted upon us. Let us renounce the othering that has been forced down our throats. Let us reclaim our place as the beacon of hope in the world. Let us redeem ourselves by reversing many of the actions of the past and moving towards a world of hope where we recognize the inherent worth of each person for the simple fact that they are just that, a person.

Most of all, let us be bold in first envisioning a better society and then in working to make it reality.