*Ours* is no certainty
Photo by Steve Houghton-Burnett on Unsplash
Four years ago, I wrote here and here about how terrified my then nine-year-old son had become of an America that could, in any way, take a Donald Trump presidency seriously. My boy asked how anyone could listen to the way he speaks about other humans and think he would care about people who don’t have something to offer him.
He was not wrong.
Over the past four years, I have seen men who, in my youth, pounded pulpits about the central importance of character and taught classes on the danger of situational ethics and morality become the immoral, power-hungry figures they cautioned against.
I‘ve watched old friends spiral deeper into overt worship of conspiracy theories and project their fear and disdain for people unlike themselves onto anyone who does not ideologically align with their “truth.”
I’ve grown increasingly frightened not just of the way self-centering algorithms have walled off people from each other, but of how excitedly those people have embraced their walls. Decorated them with hate and fear and false proclamations of love for the people outside of them…if those people would just see things the right way…would just act the way they should…would just be, well, more like the pictures on their walls.
I’ve agonized over the hate that has become, to some, logical. Aspirational even. How divided we’ve always been has become an overt tool employed by the few to profit on the many. To be clear, this has always been our way. But now, there is a sizable portion of our country who openly champion the central lie of division as multiplication.
The Trump presidency has not broken America. It’s merely laid bare the many, deep fissures that fracture us despite our myths about being *one* nation. Nostalgia—the fabric of most propaganda—is violence when it erases the hurting to preserve the pride of those empowered to hurt them.
So, no, this election will not fix America, regardless of who wins. To be certain, one candidate has proven his willingness over and over again to do whatever damage will enrich him and his wealthy cronies. There is a clear and better choice between the two, if the people choosing care to be honest with themselves.
But poverty will still oppress many Americans on November 4.
Voter suppression will still silence the will of millions, potentially with increasing power.
Power will still be abused, by law enforcement, politicians, hateful bigots with access to violence, and the wealthiest fraction of Americans who live somewhere outside the system most of us experience.
Education will still be under-funded while big business gets buy-outs we supposedly don’t have the money for.
Funding the world’s largest military will still get more support than addressing the social issues waging war on our most vulnerable neighbors, if we even allow ourselves to see them as such.
Millions will still be one bad medical moment away from bankruptcy.
The world will still be burning, literally and figuratively.
Members of a religious majority who claim peace and love as core values will continue to live the very sins they claim to reject, simply to preserve one more judge or receive one more tax break.
No, the work that lies ahead is ours, not theirs. I’m just not certain “ours” is an attainable goal at this point. I hope it can be and pray for that outcome.
But of this I am certain: unless we see everyone as equally human—regardless of how different they are—and build a world where our choices are focused most on how they will impact the least powerful, the candidates we elect will all be the same. Just symbols of which group we most identify with.
And that’s not the fictional America I was taught as fact.