I Do Give A Damn

I feel a harmonic convergence coming on.

I’m sure I am not alone in this but I couldn’t find my voice yesterday because the impending end of this election cycle is nearing and I am scared shitless.

What I want to do is launch myself down a river for a month with my dog and sit underneath a tree reading a book, or not, and count the clouds in the sky, or not, and wonder about things that don’t have to do with. . . people.

But I care too much.

Both of my parents cared deeply about the lives of others, but my father was more extroverted about it. He started a soup kitchen in downtown Dallas using the facilities of the First Presbyterian Church. He offered hair cuts and clothes and shelter.

He openly supported Hispanic and women political candidates when it wasn’t wise, popular or fashionable to do so. He was always willing to give complete strangers the opportunity for them to prove whether or not it was smart of him to have done so. He welcomed Black ministers to his Sunday sermons even though, or maybe because, he knew their outspoken nature would rankle the prim and proper largely white congregation.

My partners grow weary of my obsessiveness.

(As a side note to this, prior to the last presidential election, my partner and I spent most of the summer tooling about Seattle’s neighborhoods and climbing Seattle’s hills on a ‘60s era bicycle built for two. It had no gears and it was crafted from steel or a metal not known for being light. People would smile and wave frequently. Occasionally even cheer us along.

The following summer, after we found out we were not to have our first female president, we both thought we noted fewer people joyfully acknowledging our existence, despite the fact we had a cheery little bell we would activate quite often. I commented that the decrease in joie de vivre and the increase in sullenness could be laid directly at the feet of the con artist who stole his way into the White House. My partner now cites this vignette - credibly I might add - of my obsessive political nature. I do - however - think there is some truth to it.)

Other than health care, there is very little reason for why I should give a damn.

At least, that would be the case if this were an election between two typical politicians from the two traditional parties. Don’t get me wrong. I would still be wound up, even if that were the situation, because I see the two parties as the parties of Big Business but one party entertains the notion that the people should have a voice while the other party merely believes enough scraps will fall off the table to keep the hoi polloi alive and serving them cocktails.

One party is socially liberal and the other is socially illiberal. And I would tell you about the other five parties you could vote for but they are going to have no say in the governing of this country afterwards. So it would be a waste of words.

In this election we are voting to decide to make a peaceful transition of power by voting. And, from there, we are voting to have a chance to bend the arc of justice in the direction socially liberal minded people want it to be bent. With a socially liberal Congress there are a raft of sensible, sensical and common sense topics to address.

Four years was long enough, and too long, to be forestalled on the progress we should have been making. I won’t list the litany of things that need addressing

I don’t want to literally have to fight for those things. I want a revolution to come about by something akin to a harmonic convergence. Ninety-seven per cent of the population capable of voting in Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, are registered in 2020 to vote. That is unheard of. If enough of them harmonically converge at the ballot boxes and the voting booths, we may be witnessing another Great Awakening. An awakening that ‘we, the people’ can move the needle through citizen action.

I want the socially liberal party of Big Business to become the socially liberal party of we, the people, but in order for that to happen we need to vote in large enough numbers for them to see how much they need us.

The stakes in this election are high. My nerves and bowels tell me this. I don’t have to watch the news to feel the weight of history.

I posted this message on social media and it very much sums up this rant. In fact, I could have posted this and called it a day.

Please Vote. Please vote wisely.

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AAR Maggie Hitchcock shared this on social media and I just felt like I should spread it around even further. As I told her, Barbara Kingsolver’s novel “Flight Behavior” is tangentially related because a good portion of the story is about the migratory behavior of butterflies and the threat to their habitat.

Also, the Vote Save America folks have a website called Get Mitch (McConnell) or Die Trying where your contribution goes to a dozen or so key seats that we have the potential to ‘flip’. Please consider donating here if you have a limited budget. It’s not too late!