Keep the faith
Usually, when writing, I think a bit about what I want to write or how I want to start an article. I could not do that here. This is stream-of-consciousness writing that I hope some or all of you can connect with.
First, let me offer you all a metaphorical hug. I’m also — deeply and unequivocally sorry. I wish I’d known ahead of time. Don’t we all? That way, we could have taken time to prepare.
I doubt, however, that all the preparation in the world would have fully prepared us. It couldn’t have.
See, we the people — ALL the people who live to fight another day — are made of different stuff than this monster of a man. We are made of freedom, passion, activism, and the ferocious need to make America as gorgeous as she can be. She is as much our child as we are hers.
We could sit here and offer a million reasons why this happened. I’ve been clicking through the list of reasons in my mind, all prepared to lay them out for you. But you know what? There’s time enough for that.
It isn’t Kamala’s fault. She is an amazing woman who ran a campaign that would have been tough under the best of circumstances—and sadly, she had the worst of circumstances. She had to put a team together, an agenda together, barnstorm the country, and introduce herself to a skeptical public all within a matter of weeks.
Unfortunately, my friends, one lesson to come out of this is that there are a lot of people in this country — so many more than we thought — to whom nothing matters. These are the people who often sit on the sidelines, who don’t CARE to know more about how government works, who don’t UNDERSTAND how fragile Democracy is, and who cannot see the delicate strands of democracy before them.
Some are bored. Others are chauvinistic and cannot bring themselves to vote for a woman. Some are apathetic. Some are simply the types who live for titillation, and whatever one says about Donald Trump for these voters, he titillates them, and they blot out in their minds, any incoming danger.
So yes, we will need to speak more about something very important—not the politicians but the voters themselves—and why so few people can name even one Supreme Court justice member and why a small percentage of people think it was Joe Biden who got rid of Roe.
We also must continue to fight. Why? Because democracy really does die in darkness. We cannot be robots, malfunctioning at every loss. The hard drive must always be there, keeping us tuned in. We have been wounded, yes. But it is a wound that can heal , and once it does—and it WILL heal—we will forge on because that is what people like us were born to do.
The calling doesn’t stop because of a loss. We continue to leap across stars, learn from our mistakes, and go forward into the green forests of change and determination. To me, you are much more than readers. You are my friends, my fellow ports in a storm, my fellow activists, and we are all driven by the same ideals. Rest up. Cry if you want to. Soothe yourself, learn to smile again. And above all, don’t lose faith.
