(After a decade of lurking, I have finally posted my first diary. Pretty exciting, uh?)
I had a conversation with my father-in-law about the upcoming presidential election. I told him that I was feeling good about Joe Biden’s chances and that I was feeling more optimistic every day. My father-in-law said that he wasn’t that confident about the outcome, that Trump was going to do everything possible to steal the election.
Though I was still optimistic, I later realized that I was not confident at all about the election’s outcome. How could I? The biggest factor in the whole election is the psychotic, self-indulgent and narcissistic whims of our current President. It is impossible to predict what will happen election day or what will play out afterwards. I was living in Florida (Palm Beach County no less) back in 2000. I remember how crazy the recount was. Nonetheless, I remain hopeful that Biden will win, and that American democracy will continue to endure.
Why? Because I continue to have faith. Not faith in a higher power, although I do have that as well. No, I’m talking about faith in this grand experiment we call the United States of America. People have a lot of different ideas about faith and what it means. For me, it is about holding on to a belief, hope or dream when there is simply no empirical evidence to be found to support such beliefs or dreams. Faith is the one light we can cling to when we cannot see the path that lies before us. Ancient ocean explorers clung to it when all available data suggested that the edge of the world lied just beyond the horizon.
These are crazy, polarized times we live in. So many of us are exhausted and fearful. There are days when the only thing I want is just solid ground beneath my feet and freedom from worrying that everything is going to unravel at any minute. And yes, there are times when our faith is not rewarded.
But I would ask you to consider this. Trump is hardly the first challenge this country has ever faced. We had to earn a victory against the greatest military in the world just to create this country in the first place. Then, less than a hundred years later, this country was nearly split apart by a civil war fought over the continued existence of the slave trade. By the turn of the 20th century, racism had become institutionalized in the form of Jim Crow laws. There was the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression and two World Wars. Then, for ten days in October of 1962, the continued existence of the entire human race was brought into question as the United States and the Soviet Union struggled to find peace in the face of armageddon. One of our greatest cities and our country’s supreme military headquarters was attacked on September 11th, 2001. These and many other challenges this country has endured during its 244 year existence.
So, what has sustained us through all of these tragedies and calamities? I believe it was faith. Faith in ourselves. Faith in each other. Faith in our country and the ideals that they were founded on. Ideals that, yes, were conceived by flawed men. Men who professed to be champions of freedom while owned slaves themselves. Men who failed to address this country’s original sin for the sake of creating a union.
But I believe their greatest legacy was the tools they left behind. Tools like a press free of government intrusion, the ability to speak your mind without censorship, the freedom to assembly and to petition the government for redress of grievances. Tools that were taken up by Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, Susan B. Anthony, Fredrick Douglas, Harvey Milk, John Lewis, Malcom X and so many others both famous and unknown. They stood up to the rich and powerful in the cause of helping to find the moral center of this country. To remind those in power that being servants to graft and corruption only serves to injure all of us in the end.
And after all this. After all the struggles, the marches, the speeches, the new laws, the rights bestowed and those who gave their lives to make this country a better place, you tell me there are those who say the American story is now over? That some rich, trust fund, punk ass little bitch/reality tv star is the grim reaper that brings it all down?
Well, you’ll have to excuse my language but that is the biggest load of grade A, USDA approved, free range, government inspected BULLSHIT I have ever heard in my life!!!
And let’s be clear about one last thing. Having faith is not a substitute for action. Faith is what fuels action.