I wrote the following the day following President Biden’s election.

***

I declined to give up my Trump supporting friends, though I was called a traitor to my ideals, ideology, my party, and the marginalized groups oppressed by President Trump. We are divided enough. I won’t give up people I love on demand.

My Trump supporting friends are feeling despair that is probably only slightly less than my joy.

And those are my friends: Americans, citizens, and, most importantly, humans.

The President-elect promises to be a President for all the people. He wants to heal our differences and reunite us in the common cause of Freedom. I share that hope.

I believe in Kindness, Compassion, Empathy, and Love. I was disappointed and, often, angry when Trump supporters told me my feelings didn’t matter. Yes, they did. And, tonight, Trump supporters, your feelings matter to me. I won’t embrace the cruelty I despised. I understand your disappointment. I felt the same disappointment 4 years ago.

Now I invite everyone to work together to solve our shared problems:

*We are being killed by a pandemic. Let’s fight it together by staying apart.

* We are fighting against the hatred that says there are groups who don’t deserve the rights, protections, and privileges that have always been mine simply because I happen to have been born a straight white male. Let’s work together to ensure the best lives possible for everyone.

* Our planet is going to be unable to sustain us all in the not-too-distant future. Let’s work together to keep the oceans from rising higher, the hurricanes from blowing over homes and lives, and the fires from reducing our country to ashes.

*And let’s send the caged children back to their families.

These are just a few of the daunting tasks that lie ahead. We must also work to vanquish poverty, give healthcare to everyone, and educate all of our children.

This won’t be possible if we are divided. Let’s drop the divisions tonight. Let’s begin to unite. Let’s begin to heal. Let’s lead with love.

Let’s build a bigger table.

As I write this, the midterm elections have not yet been held.  By the time you read this and hear it, they will be part of history.  I don’t know the results.  You do.  You have the advantage of me.

I’m willing to bet, however, that many people are upset about the results.  I may be one of them.  You may be one, too, and for opposite reasons.  I feel sure someone reading this or listening to it is unhappy with the results of our election.  I understand.

That brings us to the challenge.  It’s easy to give into cynicism right now.  The election gave us results with which we are unhappy, so we should just throw up our hands and decide the system is irreparably broken, and we ought to abandon it.  I’ve spent much of this evening wasting my time in a Facebook debate about the “Both Sides Do It” argument.  A friend told me that both Democrats and Republicans are corrupt.  He may be right, but I pointed out that only one side declines to accept the results of our elections.  I asked him to show me a Democrat who wouldn’t accept defeat.  He sent me a link to Google.  He didn’t, however, show me any election-denying Democrats.  If there is such a person, I have missed them.  Please feel free to show me yourself.

This is a time for healing.  Whomever won the elections, whomever has control of Congress, there is still a chance to make things better.  If I couldn’t believe that, I would have to end my existence, and I’m not ready to do that yet.  My dog tends to object to my suicide attempts. 

Dividing ourselves into smaller and smaller groups makes us more vulnerable to being vanquished.  I won’t participate in that.  You may have voted differently than I did.  You may have very different feelings than I have about what happened on November 8, 2022.  I won’t, however, decide that I hate you because we disagree.  I will continue to love you and hope that somehow, some way, we can find common ground on which to build a better world.  I don’t believe that you want me to be killed.  I don’t believe you want my friends to be hurt, even if you and I disagree about everything.  Those who voted as I did may be angry with me for failing to reject those who voted differently.  Who is better off for that?  Shall those of us who agree about politics split ourselves up based on the purity of our beliefs?  If we do that, we grant more power to the opposition.  We move no closer to a country that lives up to its stated ideals: “… liberty and justice for all.” 

We too rarely actually think about those words because they have become empty as we droned them meaninglessly every day before class began.  To me, it means that all of us get to choose for ourselves how to live our lives, so long as we don’t hurt anyone else. 

I spent more than a little time this evening trying to convince a Christian friend that there was nothing wrong with a Drag Queen performing for children.  He came back with “Pass. When it comes to children, this is what Jesus had to say. ‘It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble.’”  And that’s my problem with what passes as Christian morality.  There can be no doubt that throwing children into the sea with a millstone tied around their necks hurts them.  Watching someone dance doesn’t.  He never replied.  You’re certainly welcome to do so.

Someone else pointed out that what it really means is that those who make children stumble should be drowned.  Is that somehow better?  Someone who dances in drag should be thrown into the ocean?  Is that the sort of country in which you would like to live?  I want nothing to do with it.  I may not be much into drag shows, but it turns out that I don’t have a monopoly on Art.  I’m not fond of rap, either, or country music for that matter, but I don’t want Willie Nelson or Eminem killed because I don’t care for their work.  I just won’t listen to it.  If I had children, and I thought it was inappropriate for them, I wouldn’t take them to their concerts.  I wouldn’t, however, tell other parents how to raise their children.  The only difference I could see between the video that was upsetting my friend so much and anything I’ve seen by Taylor Swift was that this was a man in drag.  So what?  If no one is being hurt, let him do what he wants.  The children in the audience were accompanied by their parents.  The arrogance of telling someone else how to raise their children doesn’t work for me.

Justice for all is also frequently lost on us.  It’s not Breaking News that the wealthy and powerful are frequently treated differently than the poor and powerless.  Subpoenas are often ignored by those with money.  You and I would be in jail if we ignored one.  Punishments are much harsher for those with the least power.  This isn’t justice in any meaningful form.  If we are to be what John Adams called,  “…a country of laws, and not of men…” the law needs to apply to everyone equally.

During the BLM Movement, Trevor Noah explained it well:

Why don’t we all loot? Why doesn’t everybody take? Because we’ve agreed on things. … Think about how many people who don’t, the have-nots, say, ‘I’m still going to play by the rules, even though I have nothing, because I still wish for the society to work and exist.’ Then, some members of the society, namely black American people, watch time and time again how the contract they have signed with society is not being honored by the society that has forced them to sign it with them.”

          — Trevor Noah

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/06/trevor-noah-george-floyd-protests

Justice occurs only when everyone is treated fairly.  What is fair is a question that is open to debate.  I don’t pretend to be wise enough to settle that argument.  But it seems to me that part of it has to be that one’s wealth and status can’t be the determining factors in the way our laws are applied.  It isn’t fair that wealthy and powerful people can make use of the courts to avoid doing what the rest of us are required to do. 

We can change this.  We need to change this.  We won’t change it with hatred.  We’ll change it by getting more people to understand what it means to live up to our American Ideals.  That was my point this evening.  If we can unite behind the simple idea of Liberty and Justice for All, we can still make America the greatest country in the world.  Telling me we can’t isn’t helpful.  If you have another plan to help us get there, I’m more than a little interested in hearing it.  It may be helpful.  Cynicism won’t be.

I want to leave you with the words that have been helping me to cope with my own feelings of futility for the past few weeks.  These come from my friend, Sara Niemietz.  I can’t possibly urge you strongly enough to go get her latest album, “Superman.”

Days go by and my pages turn
Slowly I write the words I learn

But I′m getting stronger every day
And I know the clouds will roll away
Just a little time I gotta wait
And I’ll be better

Yes I′m lighter everyday though I’m carrying this weight
I know things are going to change and I′ll be better
I’ll be better — Sara Niemietz, “Four Walls” from the album “Superman,” 2022