Sundays Are For Rambling

Yesterday, we received relieving, promising, and relieving news. 

Did I mention how the outcome of the presidential election feels like shoulders relaxing and jaw unclenching? 

Feeling satisfied and relieved is not the same as getting all patriotic and spouting empty catchphrases about the nation’s greatness.

For those of us who know its history — slavery, Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, just about every trash war we’ve sacrificed military and civilians to, just to name a few things — we can’t utter any of that stuff with a straight face.

But the Biden/Harris win means a return to something less shameful than what we have been experiencing the last four years. It means removing a wannabe dictator from office. It means firing someone who has used his social media account inappropriately, repeatedly, in such a way that he made his employer (us!) look bad; regular folks have lost jobs for doing as much, far fewer times and with less of an audience. It means saying that we value thoughtful leaders. 

Those qualities should not have to be spelled out so clearly, but as we have learned, they absolutely do. 

According to the unofficial results from Connecticut’s Secretary of State, 47.99% of Hartford’s eligible voters bothered to vote in this election. Considering how easy the absentee ballot process made it — no need to possibly expose oneself to COVID-19 at the polls, to find a window of time during fourteen hours on a Tuesday, or to risk a verbal or physical altercation at a polling station — this is very puzzling. For comparison, voter turnout in Burlington (Connecticut) was 91.94%, and statewide, it was 79.56%. 

This is not the most concerning thing about the election. I’ll get to that in a moment. Even if I am not sure what I do is going to make a difference, I am going to try. I want to be the kind of person who tries. I’m not a fatalist and I won’t give the time of day to despair.  

Detroit, how you doin’?

Detroit showed up. 

According to the New York Times 95% of Detroit’s votes were for Biden. 

Someone gets it.

Why support someone who doesn’t have your back? And for the last four years, T&$%p and his ilk have waged a war on cities.

Some of us, actually, can identify abusive relationships. We know how to say GTFO. 

We know what is meant by “cities.”

It’s like when towns fight against low-income housing and claim that it doesn’t fit with their “way of life.” We know what that means too. 

Detroit got it right. 

(Though Hartford’s turnout was pathetic, 86.57% of our people voted Biden, but also, who are the people here who can overlook the egregious racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and unprofessional demeanor?) 

And that’s where my concern comes in. The Biden/Harris win is huge, but also, not nearly huge enough. We should have seen numbers across the nation at 95% for Biden/Harris. Not because Biden is the dream, but simply because they meet the minimum job qualifications and the incumbent has proven that he is not up for it.

That so many people continued to vote for the incompetent incumbent is a travesty. 

I can find something positive to say about almost everyone, regardless of their politics. While opposed to so many of G.W. Bush’s policies, I felt like he truly cared for his family and loved America. I can’t even give the incumbent that much credit. 

There would be work to do even if we did not have the disaster of the last four years to contend with.

It’s not that the country is more divided.

It’s that those with repulsive beliefs — the white supremacists, the antisemites, the woman haters — have gotten bolder. Unlike in past generations when they’d only come out in white hoods, this group shows up maskless, with thin blue line stickers on their trucks.

And wait for it, the turn-the-other-cheek-nicey-nice-liberals have finally grown a spine and started fighting back.

Why call for unity when we should be calling for dismantling white supremacy? Don’t you dare ask me to hold hands (you know, virtually) with someone who would oppress those I care about. In 2019, antisemitic incidents were at their highest in the United States since they starting tracking these in 1979. You want me to smile sweet and act like I’m okay with someone who would grossly downplay the pandemic, costing American lives when so many deaths could have been prevented? I can keep going. He’s given us a new outrage every single day since 2016. 

Then, there’s this. 

The weather this weekend is lovely and terrifying, Short sleeves in November? Plants utterly confused by what season they’re in. Birds zipping around like it’s April. Motorcycle crashes galore because everyone took their crotchrockets back out on the road. Warmer and warmer temps are not normal.

When it comes to preserving the human habitat, leadership matters and the clock is ticking.

We don’t have time for someone who either can’t see or doesn’t care about the big picture, and because older generations stalled on taking any meaningful action, we don’t have time to waste waiting for the perfect, flawless leader who checks all the right boxes.