I woke up November 9th strangely re-invigorated. I woke up with a firm resolve. To do what's right. To treat people like people. My sleeves are rolled up.
Doing what's right with integrity and treating people like people lost on November 8th. But that just means I've been complacent. I wasn't trying hard enough.
I was reading the real data and not paying attention to the phony, undisciplined polls, so I wasn't shocked by the results--I had already been horrified for quite some time. I knew it was going to be close. Really close. And that's the disturbing thing. I'm not sure how people got there--to be able to vote for evil. But they did.
Disappointingly, a handful of people in Ohio have more power than anybody else in this country. (Of course, the electoral college isn't going anywhere and there's a reason it exists, but...). Somehow we elected a bully antithetical to everything I am. Someone who doesn't do things with honor. Or integrity. Someone who goes against all of my teachings--from Sunday School to Star Wars to basic fifth grade history. I invite you to an intellectual exercise: Read this review of a book on Hitler's rise to power and replace the words Hitler and Germany with those of our current president-elect and the United States (just do the bullet point section in the review). So, worst case scenario: We've got 1930s Germany. Extreme, but plausible. Best case scenario, it was all "reality" TV bluster; we get a simplified tax code, which I'm all for if it won't be too disproportionately disadvantaging to the poor.
People clearly felt his mantra--"it's rigged against me"--even though nothing could have been further from the truth. He manipulated the media that created him. In a world in which glass ceilings clearly still exist, the candidate who won had a resume that boasted the following highlights: being too poor of a businessman to make a profit in the casino business (how pathetic is that!), so pathetic a businessman that he would be at the very least 4 times richer now than if he took the money he inherited and put it in index funds (we won't know how spectacular a business failure he was, because he's never been honest with us), such a poor businessman that the list of racketeering lawsuits and non-payment to partners list is so long (that's not good business, that's being a crook)...but it was rigged against him, right? And people felt that. I feel their pain. I don't like their solution--they were conned, but I feel their pain.
I'm just a humble fishmonger with no ambitions to be anything else. But here's what I'm going to do about it...
Beyond just having a firm resolve to do what's right. To treat people like people. (And it's going to take an extraordinary amount of focus to do that.) It's time to question our unquestioned biases. It's time to turn off the news. To turn off the hyper-inflated click-bait propaganda that comes from both the left and right. The fake news stories from Macedonia that made people think the worst. The much-ado-about-absolute nothing emails. When there was no there there. But the talking heads wanted us to believe there was something there. When you look at her emails, you see someone who had a strategy. Someone who worked hard for this country. Someone who was a centrist, like me, who was willing to make compromises. Who wasn't going to let perfect be the enemy of good. Who wasn't afraid of making deeply unpopular decisions for the better of the whole. The media created these well-meaning people who pathetically kept repeating like sheep "Oh, but they're both just such horrible candidates." No they weren't. One was. And they were conned by him, whose only qualification in life is being a con artist. The other candidate worked her whole life for justice and progress. She was flawed only because when you put yourself in the public eye for so long, the flaws are going to be magnified. I didn't want to elect a saint. I wanted to elect someone who was competent.
We can't shut ourselves off from the world. But before parroting the hyper-inflated propaganda that comes just as much from the left as it does from the right, we need to remind ourselves to take a step back. Question our unquestioned biases.
But here's the good news. The good news is that art means so much more right now. When Leonard Cohen died the day after a great dream of progress in our country temporarily did, I put on the prophet's music. And I was reminded that there have been dark times before. There will be dark times again. Indeed it's probably going to get much worse before it gets better. That's fine. "There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."
We went to the opera on Friday and saw Carmen. It was not only a great distraction--the music and singing--but the story a reminder that we're irrational, we're crazy, and we do things that harm ourselves.
We made a point to eat Mexican before the opera and it was great to see a restaurant full of people--black, white and brown, Americans all, all people whose ancestors wanted what mine wanted, a better life--doing the most basic things in life. Eating and enjoying each other's company. There was beauty in that. And that's some good news.
There are other basic things we can do. We just donated $200 to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence's name. Here's his address so that he gets the Thank You note.
Officer of Governor Mike Pence
State House
Room 206
Indianapolis, IN 46204-2797
We'll do the same for environmental causes. Well, because as a humble fish monger, my livelihood depends on the health of this planet and its waters. I'm just a fish monger. I'm nobody. But at least I'm not brown, female, disabled, gay, trans, or any other type of person that's been threatened in America's course toward Hate.
Let's work to Make America Kind Again. Are your sleeves rolled up?
