American friends! A few thoughts on the election, from a fellow citizen-person!
First, PLEASE VOTE. If you think your voice doesn’t count, or wondering if it’s worth the time…IT IS. Our representative democracy only works when folks engage their voice in the one platform that truly matters: Voting.
Almost half of eligible Americans didn’t vote in the last election. Perhaps it was that the two candidates left them uninspired. Perhaps they felt the choice wouldn’t matter. Whatever their personal reasoning, that meant over 100,000,000 Americans didn’t vote. ONE HUNDRED MILLION.
Here is why it’s critical you vote. Like Nixon or Andrew Jackson, Trump embodies a massive, dangerous threat to our constitutional system. He is actively undermining the rule of law and the freedom of the press, and he is corrupting the moral center of our politics.
He is, to put it bluntly, a dangerous man.
But! The Framers of our Constitution knew this would happen. Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Papers are full of warnings about dangerous politicians who gain power by playing to people’s worst fears, by lying, and by pitting group against group.
The Framers built our entire system of Constitutional checks and balances to play human greed and fear and ego off themselves. The desires of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches would each check the worst attributes of the other. None would have unlimited power.
Trump has no checks. The Legislative body has wincingly looked the other way at a whole host of terrible moves. I could go through the litany of them, but the only one you need to remember is children. Separated from parents. And locked up. Morally, that’s all you need to know.
If the counter-argument to that is, “But the economy!” I’ll paraphrase the Bible for an American context: “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”. What does it gain America if unemployment is low, but we forget who we are?
I say this as a straight, white, well-educated Christian dude who has nothing — NOTHING — to fear in Trump’s America. I fear for what happens to my Latinx, black, Jewish, Muslim and gay brothers and sisters…who all have infinitely more to fear.
Remember the Holocaust poem, "First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, & there was no one left to speak for me.”
You’ve felt it in your bones. The shift in our politics. The words and the tones and the corrupting influence of Trump on our culture has been devastating. But your vote can start to reverse that tide.
To my friends who are independents, who are Democrats, & who are traditional Conservatives, I beg of you: Put country before party. In this mid-term election, vote for checks and balances against Trump. Your Senator, your Representative, your Governor, your Attorney General.
We are better than this in our politics. I see it every day in the small acts of kindness Americans show towards one another. We are not defined by the worst elements among us. So I ask you friends, go out and express your love of country with the power of your vote.
That’s all I got. Thank you, friends, for voting!
