Ready!

During the past week, I have gone through many stages of something that can only be called Freaking Out-Pissed 'n Disgusted-Somewhat Drunk-In Denial-A Few Tears-Cautiously Hopeful. It's been the longest roller coaster and not a particularly fun one. I and my co-passengers are nauseous, tired, and ready to get the hell off.

I believe we'll approach the ride's end sometime late tomorrow. Jesus be a fence, I am pulling the off chain like nobody's business. Here is what I hope awaits. 

After exiting, my shaky-legged co-riders and I will be met by an enormous throng of exultant people handing out Pepto Bismol, flutes of champagne, mylar blankets, and gift certificates for well-adult stays in area spas and meditation rooms.

Hillary, in a diamond pantsuit handmade by scores of relieved Nasty Women, will be passed from shoulder to proud shoulder, beaming brilliantly. She will shed some of the forty years of tears she has accumulated by shouldering all manner of misogynistic and political bullshit. No one will judge this display of emotion but rather applaud it, likely crying too because this woman is an epic Olympian and, my god, we almost got our kitties grabbed.

The Screaming Yam will be pouting in Uge Field, the ungilded back forty of Mar-a-Lago. His comb over will have fallen to one side, a greased slick of blech weeping atop his shoulder. Around him, his evil minions will be combusting one by one, their maniacal hatred for pretty much everything too toxic to remain in the world. Like giant farts released from Yam's belching bottom, they will stink the atmosphere up one last time before dissipating into nothingness. 

The bullies will stalk around, punching angry fists into open palms. Their leader was knocked out in the last round! But ultimately they'll come to see that the hard-working She Nerd really cares for them in all the ways Yam never did and never will. They may not admit it. Bullies usually don't. We sense some acceptance when their choir chooses a new song and "Lock Her Up" is forever sealed away in the Vault of the Overplayed Threat Anthems. It's something!

The motley crew of wild-eyed cowards peppering Congress will decide to take a collective Xanax and remember that thing they once heard about Country. Country doesn't mean lying and obstruction and silly threats like refusing to hear any of the other side's Supreme Court justice nominations. It doesn't mean throwing women and people of color back in time like so many Sisyphuses with yet another world-sized boulder just so a few (mostly white guys) can enjoy the best view for a while longer. Nope, the wild-eyed meanies will realize that they and the pitiful majority of the media who've sold their souls for a popularity that is more ephemeral than they'd care to believe have erred. They're a huge part of what's made America feel not so "great" lately. Working together and listening to and respecting each other and facts is a better way to great.

Our country will step back from the precipice of full-scale destruction, exhaling gratefully as we wake from a nightmare that almost cost us too dearly. Much of the world will do the same, filing all those economic contingency plans into the Code Red safe that no one ever wants to open again and thanking the pantsuited army for saving the day. 

Our phones will go silent, "Unavailable" no longer ringing night after night after night.
Our televisions will appear broken, quiet, black moments swimming in the righthand corners once inhabited by hyperbolic, "we're all going to die!" lies and in the lefthand nooks more truthful embellishment.
Our garbage facilities will launch into overdrive, recycling the forests of campaign signs and mountains of glass bottles that were used and consumed during this dreadful carnival. 
Gary Johnson will head home and smoke up. Jill Stein will hitch a ride with an eager environmental crew and do something good for the planet. No one will ever utter the phrase "anti-vax" again.
Our children will see a hopeful way of being united instead of an ugly way of being cleaved. For so many of them, my sons included, their reality will be that a black man was a great president, and a strong, incredible woman followed in his footsteps. 

In just over twenty-four hours, when we get off this roller coaster, our shoulders will drop and we will smile. Pantsuit sales will skyrocket. We will join hands, and the healing will begin. 

Scared

In late August of 2001, I was in a seatbelt-less car hurtling down a pock-marked dirt road lit only by our dim headlights. Sam and I were in the backseat, clinging to each other. I was sobbing. 

I don't remember the driver's name. I don't remember anything about him except his smile. He'd picked us up in Narok, and if memory serves, we were heading back to Nairobi. 

I don't recall ever having been a believer, but that dark night in Kenya, I crossed my fingers and issued prayer after prayer, begging for safe deliverance. Later, Sam admitted that he too had feared we might not make it home alive. To this day I can remember my terror. It is an uncomfortable feeling, such fear.

Two weeks later, back home in New York, the Twin Towers fell. I was shocked, stunned, unmoored and scared. But that fear I'd met in Kenya? I don't recall feeling that.

Anxiety and I have known each other for a lifetime, but fear is less familiar to me. The older I've grown, the stronger and braver I've gotten. Fear has become quite the stranger. 

Late last night, bottom of the 10th inning, two outs, Cubs up by 1. Martinez hits a grounder towards third. Bryant fields it with a golden glove, smiling. He knows if he can get it to Rizzo, the crown is the Cubs'. Bryant to Rizzo, clean as a whistle. Martinez is out. The game is over. 8-7 Cubs.

For so many reasons-thrill, fatigue, surprise, the emotion that is stirred when something has long been desired and is finally obtained-I began to cry. I threw my glasses into the recliner, jumped into the air with unabashed joy, and let the tears dance over my cheeks. 

I realized then, that I was also crying for the brief salve the greatest game of the "all-American game" that I have ever seen in my 40 years offered to the festering psychological wound wrought by this year's presidential election. Watching the culmination of teamwork, hard work, good sportsmanship, and grace (Rizzo anyone?) was a balm, not unlike the moment a numbing medicine kicks in. 

In this case, what was momentarily numbed was the fear I've felt in recent weeks, a fear that is all too similar to that I felt as we careened down that dark, choppy road fifteen years ago. It's the sort of fear that comes from considering that a time you love is coming to an end and you're not remotely ready for or desirous of that. Life, a functional body politic, those sorts of big-ticket items.

I pride myself on a relative lack of drama and emotionality about things I can't do anything about. I try to approach situations with some rationality and clarity: how might I be able to help or effect change? What are the things I simply can't influence or control? 

But I admit to feeling some straight-up panic lately. I have one vote and limited time and money. I've given, monetarily, as much as I can to the Clinton campaign. I am having the talks, urging people to vote, offering to drive. I am sharing factual information. I'm starting to see that facts don't carry the same weight as they once did.

I'm not sure what to make of a society in which large segments choose not to accept fact. Where does one go if 2 + 2 no longer makes 4? If an official birth certificate doesn't prove birth place? If one, three, seven investigations unanimously agree that no criminal action occurred but still more inquiries are demanded?

What happens to a society who ceases to value dignity and honor? To observe mores of decent behavior? Where do we go if evidence of mockery, sexual assault, illegality, and bigotry doesn't lead to punishment and justice served but rather to popularity?

What happens to a country when its meanest elements are unleashed and some cheer? When the KKK endorses the top of the ticket for one of our two main political parties? What happens now? What happens later? How do we explain this to our children?

What happens when some want to turn the clock back for all? What happens to those who have worked, died, for their gains? Are they expected to just hand it all back? Head into the back-alley instead of a safe medical facility? Shuffle back into disenfranchisement?

What happens when the media subordinates its own Hippocratic oath to a vapid desire for clicks and views? When journalists establish a false equivalency between two candidates of vastly disparate experience, knowledge base, and ability? Trump and Clinton aren't apples. It is an epic failure that too many in our media have pitted them as nothing more than varietals.

In 2004, Tom and I were grad students in Boston. I remember so clearly the concern that we and so many of our classmates felt about the possibility of a Bush reelection. That concern seems positively quaint now. I would be grateful for that degree of worry today.

An open letter to Millennials and voters considering voting Third Party

Dear Millennials and Citizens Considering Voting Third Party,

I do understand and respect your idealism and hopeful (for some, desperate) desire for change. Washington is, in many ways, a broken embarrassment of a federal government. It is hyper-partisan and beholden to money and special interests. It enacted and now selfishly profits from gerrymandering, a grotesque distortion of areas that privileges some (most egregiously the elected official) against many and extreme ideology versus willingness to compromise. 

It is youthful idealism and a sincere desire for things better that often propels a society forward. We must never inhibit hope. I remember being so deeply hopeful myself: the right and just ways forward often seem so clear, and bureaucracy and glacial progress so stupid and frustrating. 

And yet.

And yet, idealism is just the start. A beautiful start that nonetheless needs tempering by loss and reality. I mean no condescension in that. It's just that as a mother now, for example, I understand my own mother so differently. Understand her fatigue and limits and worries and upset in a new way. And while I mother differently because of that, I also mother the same because of that. Because of the wisdom and simple truths in what needs to happen versus what I sometimes wish would.

I understand your desire to make a statement by voting third party. I do. I was a huge Ross Perot fan way back when. I even put his campaign sticker on my beloved hair dryer, melting it onto the plastic orange shaft forever more. 

But I beseech you to see that because we don't have a multiparty political system, as votes for Ralph Nader proved in the Bush-Gore election, that pivotal election when you were just babes, third party votes are wasted ones. I repeat: without a Third Party system, votes for Third Party candidates are, ultimately, always a vote for someone else: the less-popular candidate who would otherwise come in second. That tips the math against the more popular candidate. On November 9, a vote for Johnson or Stein is, overall but especially in swing states, a vote for Trump. Please know that. Please believe that. And please see below for what Johnson and Stein believe in.

I wish so much about our politics were different. I would love to see a multiparty system as well as the abolition of the electoral college, gerrymandering, years-long campaigning, and Citizens United. But I know that those changes won't happen overnight or in a country in which only one of two candidates will, as things are structured now, win. Currently, a protest vote isn't a a vote for the greater, idealized good; it's a wasted act of defiance that, sadly, doesn't carry weight in the way you hope it will or wish it would.

If you love this country and worry about jobs and the economy and racism and our status in the world, if you care about the next judges seated on the Supreme Court and someone who will deal with the horrid socioeconomic inequality and systemic bigotry in our criminal justice system, if you want someone who appreciates science and honors fact, who will work proactively to tend to our Earth, I urge you to vote against a Trump presidency. The only way to do that is to vote for Clinton.

As you may have seen in the first debate, Trump is not informed, he is not kind, he is not curious. He is petulant and rude and self-absorbed. I can't imagine how anyone can do anything but help ensure he is not elected. Otherwise, you're part of the problem, now and with regard to the repercussions that will follow.

Respectfully,
A 40-year-old from Louisiana now living in Maryland
~~
Gary Johnson:
- supports TPP.
- supports fracking.
- supports Citizens United.
- opposes net neutrality.
- wants to increase the Social Security retirement age to 75 and is open to privatization.
- opposes any kind of national health care and wants to repeal Obamacare.
- opposes any kind of paid maternity or medical leave.
- supported the Keystone XL pipeline.
- opposes any government action to address climate change.
- wants to cut the corporate tax rate to zero.
- seems to think that we should reduce financial regulation. All we need to do is allow big banks to fail and everything will be OK.
- wants to remove the Fed's mandate to maximize employment and has spoken favorably of returning to the gold standard.
- wants to repeal the 16th Amendment and eliminate the income tax, the payroll tax, and the estate tax. He would replace it with a 28 percent FairTax that exempts the poor. This is equivalent to a 39 percent sales tax, and it would almost certainly represent a large tax cut for the rich.
- could not name a single foreign leader when asked. He finally said, "the former Mexican president."

Jill Stein:
- is wholly pro-environment and clean energy and wants to transition to 100% clean renewable energy by 2030. She is against fracking.
- wants to set a mandatory $15/hour federal minimum wage, break up “too-big-to-fail” banks and democratize the Federal Reserve. She wants to provide free universal childcare.
- wants to establish an improved “Medicare For All” single-payer public health insurance program to provide everyone with quality health care. She wants to llow full access to contraceptive and reproductive care and expand women's access to "morning after" contraception by lifting the Obama Administration's ban.
- wants to replace NAFTA and other corporate free trade agreements that export American jobs, depress wages, and undermine the sovereign right of Americans and citizens of other countries to control their own economy and political choices. She is pro-union.
- wants to repeal the Taft-Hartley Act which banned secondary boycotts and permitted state "right-to-work" laws. 
- wants to guarantee tuition-free, world-class public education from pre-school through university, and abolish student debt to free a generation of Americans from debt servitude.
- wants to end the war on drugs, legalize marijuana/hemp, release nonviolent drug offenders from prison, end police brutality, mass incarceration and institutional racism, and demilitarize police.
- wants to repeal the Patriot Act, abolish the death penalty, and ban drone use for purposes of killing.
- wants to abolish the Electoral College, reinstate section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, and enact statehood for D.C.