Interpreting the Election
Dear Friends,
It’s been a week of tumultuous anxiety, from a dark midnight Tuesday, to a glory filled sunrise today, from Atlanta, Georgia to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, songs of jubilation are beginning to rumble. I’ve checked my phone ten thousand times, prepped three dinners with a laptop over the soup, all to the detriment of my child’s well-being. My inner turmoil is less a reflection of the state of the nation, than the state of myself.
How do we interpret this election? All the red and the blue, the numbers and the flips?
The dominant narrative out of the left has been one of hurt. How could so many fellow Americans vote for an outright racist, marred in incompetence and lies? I believe this reading of the election is profoundly flawed. And more than generating woundedness, which is a terrible soil in which to sow transformation, it functions to substantiate the divide in our country. We’re not going to win over any red voters by calling them racist at every election cycle.
Elections are a team sport. We are tribalists by nature. All of us, red, blue or purple. And just because the captain of your team happens to be an ass this year, doesn’t mean you switch teams. Were Kasich at the top of the ticket — would we absolve the country of the confrontations with racism and economic inequality we are demanding now? Were Sanders atop the other ticket? Would we consider ourselves further along in those reckonings? The head of the beast is not necessarily a reflection of its heart.
We are misreading the place and significance of the line down the center of our nation. The incongruous drives by which human beings make decisions are incredibly complex. The priorities that the pollsters believe they can parse out: economy, healthcare, “crime”, climate change, gun policy, immigration, candidate, tribe — are tangled inside us in inextricable fashion.
The worldview that my friends and community members voted for — the one that will offer equal rights and opportunities for all people, acknowledgement and healing of the systemic racism ingrained in the foundations of our country, living wages for all people no matter their work, healthcare for all, ecological policies that acknowledge the profound climate challenges we face, openness and respect offered to all those who traverse mountains to reach our shores — demands more than a blue vote. The creation of that worldview will necessitate profound changes to the choices whereby we live our lives, and to the capacities of our inner lives, the skill sets of the heart, to embrace vulnerability and the discomfort of reckoning with difficult truths.
Of those who voted blue, how many of us are willing to stop eating meat, stop wearing mink, stop creating ease in our own lives by way of industries that can only exist through underpaid laborers. How many of us are willing to give up private healthcare for the sake of a healthcare system that takes care of all people? How many of us are willing to fork over excessive wealth for the sake of the worldview we envision?
And the work on the outside is only the beginning. The inner landscape will prove a far more complex field for transformation. Though we espouse a society that confronts racism and makes space for gender fluidity and expression, how many of us are willing to regularly engage in the discussion of these issues? These conversations, uncomfortable as they may be, are the only way by which we grow within and the structures that compose our society change. If we only vote for a woman’s right to choose but do not engage with internalized misogyny, regardless of our gender, we are not laying the foundations of the culture we’re yearning for. How many of us are ready to allow all of the settings of our lives — at work, at home, in community — to be places of profound vulnerability, where owning our faults and wounds can be seen as a sign of strength, where fragility is welcomed as the condition of honesty and change?
To pretend that everyone who voted blue is ready for that world is a sham. I’m barely ready for it, though I believe with all my heart it’s the path we must take. The world we see is far more often a reflection of what is inside us. The line down the middle of the country is the line that runs through each of us. And we don’t vote once every four years. We vote countless times a day. And we shouldn’t kid ourselves. My votes for self and tribe come to at least fifty percent of the tally.
So what is this election really about? The function of the presidency is to perform the part of priest and leader in chief, to console in times of hardship, to offer courage in moments of fear, to demonstrate strength and wisdom whenever her face is before the camera, as a self reflection for each of the citizens of the nation The president of the nation plays that part in order to create a fertile soil, a safe container marked by aspirational values, so that each one of us can pursue the work of inner transformation which will ultimately be the roots of a culture of kindness, compassion and justice for all. We voted for the leader who will give us the opportunity to build the society we envision inside out.