Ongoing Trouble

The election is next week and COVID-19 numbers are surging again. Our current President continues to broadcast lies and to do everything in his power to undermine the sense of legitimacy in the vote that it appears he will lose. (I am hopeful but not confident.) The third wave of the pandemic is upon us and still rising even as Trump blames it on the media and assures his followers that we have turned a corner. (Stephen Colbert has pointed out that ‘wave’ might not be the best term since the ‘trough’ between waves two and three was the same height as the peak of the first wave. Perhaps ‘episodic with ever increasing peaks’ would be a better, though less catchy, description.)

Many of us have no memory of living in times as uncertain and momentous as these. I hope our fear about the future of our republic turns out to be overblown. I hope the Republicans in the Senate and on the Supreme Court, will, if necessary, stand for our way of government over the interest of a political strong-man who wants to stay endlessly in power. But given their past actions, I am not hopeful. Even now I am considering how I might need to stand up over the coming weeks to protect our—to protect what? our way of life? our democratic institutions? my cozy life as a well-educated and reasonably well-off white man?

William James once said that our actions are our vote for the kind of world we want to live in.

I have sent a few letters to anonymous people in Pennsylvania. I was given names and a form letter that I personalized to encourage them to get out and vote. I sent them out on October 18th. The postmark will clearly be from Massachusetts, but the return address will be from Pennsylvania. Hand-addressed, I suspect they may be opened out of curiosity. Will a letter from a stranger have any impact? Even a small impact may make a difference.

I will try to vote this weekend in advance of the election when a local college gymnasium hosts early voting. If that doesn’t work out, I will vote on election day—as carefully as I can. Even a small impact may make a difference. I am hoping the vote is overwhelmingly for Biden and the Democrats.

Jill LaPore’s powerful book THESE TRUTHS makes it clear that the American history that we have carefully scrubbed and polished to support our current perspective covers over a degree of instability and uncertainty that is chilling to read about. Our current situation is not as unprecedented as we like to think. Politics has always been a wild struggle and the forces of greed, anger and ignorance are continually part of the equation. Sensible men (and it has been mostly men) have made morally terrible decisions while patting themselves on the back for their fairness and sagacity. The grand language of democracy has been used to obscure and justify blatantly self-serving actions of systemic cruelty and avarice.

Whatever happens next Tuesday and beyond, the struggle will continue. Trump really does represent the feelings and fears of a significant part of our country. Even if Biden wins and Trump eventually steps down, the work will only be beginning. The damage of the lies and disinformation has only compounded the real challenges of a changing pluralistic society where the traditional hegemony of whites in general and white men in particular is no longer tenable.

Many of us are motivated to join in the struggle – for black and brown lives, for a country where women are treated under the law and in real life as full citizens, to shift our country’s rampant and irresponsible destruction of the environment and to hold corporations to standards of decency and reciprocity that take our grandchildren and their grandchildren into account. For human rights and for the natural rights of this precious and sacred world in which we live.

We must play the long game. It has never been easy or clear or certain. Gains and losses are the peaks and valleys of real life. But there is the accumulation of small actions that can build to a wave of possibility. Please join in however you can to stand for what you believe in – to nudge or push or edge the world toward decency and a greater awareness of the interdependence of all.