Election Eve Thoughts, 2020

 

My early voting selfie from Oct. 15, 2020

It's the day before the 2020 US election. I’m not sure I can explain everything I’m thinking and feeling right now, but here it goes.

 

It seems appropriate to start with the latest COVID numbers.

 

Worldwide

Cases: 47,277,319

Deaths: 1,210,314

 

US

Cases: 9,550,837

Deaths: 236,899

 

Hamilton County, TN

Cases: 12,820

Deaths: 111

 

Amidst this pandemic that has taken lives and livelihoods, revealing deep political and economic rifts, amidst continuing police brutality and racial injustice, amidst a march into fascism by one of our major political parties, we Americans are having an election tomorrow. (More of us voted early than usual, but many will be voting tomorrow).

 

I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow. I’m even less sure about what happens in the days and weeks after Election Day. But whatever happens, America is not well. But I do think there is some good in my country, and to paraphrase Sam Gamgee, it’s worth fighting for. 

 

We are a diverse and vibrant country, even if some of us pretend otherwise. We have a rich and fascinating history, even if it’s marred by genocide, slavery, and injustice. We invented jazz, rock ‘n roll, and hip hop, even if we give far too little credit to the African American culture from which these musical forms emerged. 

 

We could make America truly great for the first time. If we wanted to. If we worked toward a more perfect union.

 

I go into this election all too aware than many of my fellow Americans feel differently. Many even believe differently about the basic facts of where we are as a nation.

 

To borrow a line from a great American, Martin Luther King, Jr.: where do we go from here? Chaos or community?

 

I can’t begin to know. I don’t know how to form community with those who seek to destroy community. We may have reached the point where power comes before compromise. We may have to out-vote and legally out-maneuver a subset of our fellow Americans for the good of us all. We may have to govern around them if possible. As someone who believes in participatory democracy, this troubles me deeply. Yet the last few years have revealed that we have come to a deeply troubling place. Maybe we’ve always been here.

 

I do hope, nonetheless, that some healing, some reconciliation will be possible at some point in the coming years and decades. Cynical though the last few years have made me, I still believe that something like MLK's Beloved Community is a good worth fighting for.

 

And this country with all its maddening atavisms and stark injustices is, I hope, a place that might someday be great, where a future Beloved Community might be stitched together from the scraps of our horrific past and our troubled present.

 

Tomorrow we vote. And then the work continues.