An Open Letter to Red America
So: it’s all over but the counting. Or -for the rest of you, it probably is all over, but I live in Missouri, and we count a little slower here.
We have a new president, some new representatives and senators and governors. These new leaders were democratically elected. No one was shot and killed at their polling place; no mobs formed. No cities were burned, no atrocities committed. We stood in line, we voted, and when we cried, we cried over the results and not over the corpses. This is a litany of achievements unimaginable in a few other parts of the globe. Not more than a century ago, it was a litany of achievements unimaginable in our own little corner of the world.
Welcome to the United States of America. Land of the free: home of the brave.
It takes courage to put a slip of paper in a box, punch a button, and believe that your government will tally your vote honestly, report it truthfully. It takes courage to choose at all, to invest enough conviction in one candidate or another to scratch out that little circle, punch through that ticket. Courage to say: I believe we can do better, and here is how.
Having undertaken so much, then, with our vote -it is devastating to lose. The changes you were willing to make have been rejected; the person you trusted to make them is not the person now choosing for you. I know how that looks. I know how that feels. I was too young to vote in the last election, and I was disenfrancised in 2006. So: I know how that feels, the angry sick futility of watching, not participating, not owning any of the decisions that will be yours to bear. I plan to go into government service: it’s my life goal. Odds and statistics say: over the next sixty years, I will serve men that terrify me and administrations I cannot trust or endorse. I will still serve. Need does not abate with conviction; they are not positively correlated.
So: I am twenty-one years old. I don’t remember Clinton’s election, though I remember his scandal. I remember Bush’s election. I remember 9/11, too. I remember the hard angry tears I cried the first time I heard “The Angry American-” and those were tears of agreement, tears of pride.
I’ve done a lot of crying, since then. Once a year, to mark the day. Once for the Patriot Act, as it passed. Once when Afghanistan became Iraq -the only time I’ve ever felt the same devastated blankness that I felt on 9/11, as though I were a screen, playing through all of the anguish others saw and showed to me. No hands to help, no voice to speak. I cried once in the post office, over a commemorative poster, and Daryl Worley’s anguished, “Some say our country’s just out looking for a fight/well after 9/11 man, I ‘d have to say that’s right-”
No, I haven’t forgotten. I will never forget, will not let myself forget, because while I am mourning not just the heroes and the innocents and the hearts that conceived and delivered that nightmare, I also am also regretting the instinct that has crabbed my country up, swaddled it in fear. Our innocence wasn’t burned away, blasted away, didn’t smoke into oblivion in one day. It has disintegrated over the last seven years -not because of choices we made as a country, but in the small moments of vicious anger, the petty seconds I’ve hated strangers for believing something I couldn’t, for inflicting that belief over me. I’ve felt that grudging dislike and that pinching disdain, dismissal, disinterest, horror -I’ve felt that for the worst the Taliban has offered us. I’ve felt it as much for the Evangelical Right, for the social conservatives, the independents I believed had wasted their vote.
Today, I’m done with that. I’ve been done with that since August, since December when my students told me about Barak Obama.
So: this is my country, and what is imperfect and shameful, what it has done wisely and what it has done wrong, these are equally my legacy and equally mine to carry. I cannot disown Bush and not disown Lincoln. They’re of the same cloth. Likewise, I will not be ashamed of our mistakes until we repeat them -and if we should, it is not my country I will fault. It is myself.
Welcome to the United States. Land of the free: home of the brave. Democracy is rigorous. It is personal, intimate, terrible in the way that only the projection of millions upon millions of quivering earnest hopes and fears can be. It shakes and it breathes and at its strongest, it listens. It listens earnestly and it endeavors to heed.
The salt in the wound of 2004, for me, was hearing that narrow victory described as a mandate. Just as now, I am nervous with, bothered by, disturbed and distressed to see Obama’s victory portrayed anywhere as a landslide. It wouldn’t matter to me if he won 99.8% to .1%.
The value, the worth, the honor of a Democracy lies in the fierceness with which it protects the rights of its minority. Social justice is for the downtrodden, for those whose views the system will not of its own accord acknowledge, incorporate. If you are in the minority, our government ought to be listening to you; if you are in the majority, it already has. To the supporters of McCain, those disappointed and grave, those who booed his speech and those who wept: this country’s job is now to listen to you. Press of bodies will pass the majority agenda; it is up to the minority to be vocal, to be honest, to be forward in advancing its arguments so that the majority’s will is mitigated. There’s no virtue in extremes.
So-please don’t give up. Please don’t put up the ball and the bat, please don’t walk off the field. I do not want my playground, or my country, all to myself. I like it when you stand up to me; I admire virtues I may never be able to admit that I see in you. I envy your faith and your conviction, and I respect your strength. I don’t think most of conservative America would say that to me: our strengths are different, and maybe I haven’t shown you the best of mine yet. But I will listen. I will think about what you say. I will let it change the way I view the world. It’s not about concessions made or malleability. It’s about having been in your shoes and knowing what potential I squandered these last four years, out of resentment, out of fear, out of rabid mistrust.
So, okay. New promise, new plan-mine, and mine only, but I’m a start.
There’s nothing off the table for me, nothing I’ll reject out of hand, nothing I won’t let you argue. I won’t make any promises to agree, but I will listen rationally and I will play ball, because I want you to play ball with me. I know we can play, because at the base we’ve got the same rules. That’s the beauty of the Constitution. I also know we’re going to argue, and that I’m going to ask you to give ground, yield a run, call the game early. You’ll ask the same of me. I won’t like it and I’ll do it anyway, from time to time. Will you?
This isn’t a new era. This is the same old era with some unfamiliar faces, a few strange arguments on the table, and God, a mountain of problems of a magnitude unimaginable ten years ago. “My half” of this country will not solve those problems by itself; neither will “your half.” But even half of “us” and half of “you” -we could do a lot.
So: what do you suggest?
(ETA: A cut, for one!)
We have a new president, some new representatives and senators and governors. These new leaders were democratically elected. No one was shot and killed at their polling place; no mobs formed. No cities were burned, no atrocities committed. We stood in line, we voted, and when we cried, we cried over the results and not over the corpses. This is a litany of achievements unimaginable in a few other parts of the globe. Not more than a century ago, it was a litany of achievements unimaginable in our own little corner of the world.
Welcome to the United States of America. Land of the free: home of the brave.
It takes courage to put a slip of paper in a box, punch a button, and believe that your government will tally your vote honestly, report it truthfully. It takes courage to choose at all, to invest enough conviction in one candidate or another to scratch out that little circle, punch through that ticket. Courage to say: I believe we can do better, and here is how.
Having undertaken so much, then, with our vote -it is devastating to lose. The changes you were willing to make have been rejected; the person you trusted to make them is not the person now choosing for you. I know how that looks. I know how that feels. I was too young to vote in the last election, and I was disenfrancised in 2006. So: I know how that feels, the angry sick futility of watching, not participating, not owning any of the decisions that will be yours to bear. I plan to go into government service: it’s my life goal. Odds and statistics say: over the next sixty years, I will serve men that terrify me and administrations I cannot trust or endorse. I will still serve. Need does not abate with conviction; they are not positively correlated.
So: I am twenty-one years old. I don’t remember Clinton’s election, though I remember his scandal. I remember Bush’s election. I remember 9/11, too. I remember the hard angry tears I cried the first time I heard “The Angry American-” and those were tears of agreement, tears of pride.
I’ve done a lot of crying, since then. Once a year, to mark the day. Once for the Patriot Act, as it passed. Once when Afghanistan became Iraq -the only time I’ve ever felt the same devastated blankness that I felt on 9/11, as though I were a screen, playing through all of the anguish others saw and showed to me. No hands to help, no voice to speak. I cried once in the post office, over a commemorative poster, and Daryl Worley’s anguished, “Some say our country’s just out looking for a fight/well after 9/11 man, I ‘d have to say that’s right-”
No, I haven’t forgotten. I will never forget, will not let myself forget, because while I am mourning not just the heroes and the innocents and the hearts that conceived and delivered that nightmare, I also am also regretting the instinct that has crabbed my country up, swaddled it in fear. Our innocence wasn’t burned away, blasted away, didn’t smoke into oblivion in one day. It has disintegrated over the last seven years -not because of choices we made as a country, but in the small moments of vicious anger, the petty seconds I’ve hated strangers for believing something I couldn’t, for inflicting that belief over me. I’ve felt that grudging dislike and that pinching disdain, dismissal, disinterest, horror -I’ve felt that for the worst the Taliban has offered us. I’ve felt it as much for the Evangelical Right, for the social conservatives, the independents I believed had wasted their vote.
Today, I’m done with that. I’ve been done with that since August, since December when my students told me about Barak Obama.
So: this is my country, and what is imperfect and shameful, what it has done wisely and what it has done wrong, these are equally my legacy and equally mine to carry. I cannot disown Bush and not disown Lincoln. They’re of the same cloth. Likewise, I will not be ashamed of our mistakes until we repeat them -and if we should, it is not my country I will fault. It is myself.
Welcome to the United States. Land of the free: home of the brave. Democracy is rigorous. It is personal, intimate, terrible in the way that only the projection of millions upon millions of quivering earnest hopes and fears can be. It shakes and it breathes and at its strongest, it listens. It listens earnestly and it endeavors to heed.
The salt in the wound of 2004, for me, was hearing that narrow victory described as a mandate. Just as now, I am nervous with, bothered by, disturbed and distressed to see Obama’s victory portrayed anywhere as a landslide. It wouldn’t matter to me if he won 99.8% to .1%.
The value, the worth, the honor of a Democracy lies in the fierceness with which it protects the rights of its minority. Social justice is for the downtrodden, for those whose views the system will not of its own accord acknowledge, incorporate. If you are in the minority, our government ought to be listening to you; if you are in the majority, it already has. To the supporters of McCain, those disappointed and grave, those who booed his speech and those who wept: this country’s job is now to listen to you. Press of bodies will pass the majority agenda; it is up to the minority to be vocal, to be honest, to be forward in advancing its arguments so that the majority’s will is mitigated. There’s no virtue in extremes.
So-please don’t give up. Please don’t put up the ball and the bat, please don’t walk off the field. I do not want my playground, or my country, all to myself. I like it when you stand up to me; I admire virtues I may never be able to admit that I see in you. I envy your faith and your conviction, and I respect your strength. I don’t think most of conservative America would say that to me: our strengths are different, and maybe I haven’t shown you the best of mine yet. But I will listen. I will think about what you say. I will let it change the way I view the world. It’s not about concessions made or malleability. It’s about having been in your shoes and knowing what potential I squandered these last four years, out of resentment, out of fear, out of rabid mistrust.
So, okay. New promise, new plan-mine, and mine only, but I’m a start.
There’s nothing off the table for me, nothing I’ll reject out of hand, nothing I won’t let you argue. I won’t make any promises to agree, but I will listen rationally and I will play ball, because I want you to play ball with me. I know we can play, because at the base we’ve got the same rules. That’s the beauty of the Constitution. I also know we’re going to argue, and that I’m going to ask you to give ground, yield a run, call the game early. You’ll ask the same of me. I won’t like it and I’ll do it anyway, from time to time. Will you?
This isn’t a new era. This is the same old era with some unfamiliar faces, a few strange arguments on the table, and God, a mountain of problems of a magnitude unimaginable ten years ago. “My half” of this country will not solve those problems by itself; neither will “your half.” But even half of “us” and half of “you” -we could do a lot.
So: what do you suggest?
(ETA: A cut, for one!)