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A post-election hope written before we voted

I am writing these words a week before yesterday's Election Day, so I don't know whether American voters have chosen as our president a serial liar, authoritarian and convicted felon who tried to overthrow the government he once headed or whether they have elected our flawed but capable vice president to be our first female president.

Common-goodWhat I do know is that our task as citizens is much the same either way. We must insist that our elected officials at all levels put the common interests of the people above partisan politics. And, individually and collectively, we must be active citizens who don't fall into despair about our future and, therefore, leave that future to others.

That responsibility became unexpectedly clearer to me recently as I sorted through a bin full of poetry that I had written in college and not long after. My goal was to keep some of those foolish words from ever being made public and to save our children from having to paw through them after I'm part of the Dead Poets' Society.

What struck me about this winnowing process, however, wasn't just the rare poem that still seemed to work but, rather, my clear frustration and even anger at the time I wrote them about what I was seeing in the world and my response to it.

Most of these poems were written in the 1960s when America was responding haltingly to the Civil Rights Movement, to the war in Vietnam and the lies our government was telling us about that, to a pervasive culture of rock 'n roll, to a growing drug culture, to the renewed stirrings of the movement to liberate women and to much else.

Here is the start of one I entitled "Of a short time ago":

When I was at Dean Street School

and Clarence Olson Junior High School

and Woodstock Community High School,

each of a slightly different shade

of brick, each of a reputedly different

academic level (which they said had

nothing to do with the color of brick)

mostly it was a time of Eisenhower

and that other slowly beating heart Nixon,

one of whom, I remember, went to Korea

though neither ever really went

to find out about America,

which they could have done

in any of my three schools.

 

For I remember being taught

about Dick and Jane and Sally,

whose major worries were Spot and Puff

and whether they would

knock over mother's jar of face cream

or track mud all over mother's

newly waxed linoleum floor,

which, though waxed, never ultimately waned,

for somehow linoleum floors

seemed in that pleasant time

to possess much more resignation

and stamina to be walked upon

that did those people of different shades

about whom we never spoke seriously.

When I was near the end of fifth grade, my family and I moved to India for two years, and my view of the world widened almost unimaginably. I saw the American world in which I'd grown up in a small, almost-all-white, almost-all-Christian town through different eyes.

By the time I wrote the poem above and others, I was, as I say, in college in the 1960s and the culture and world were in turmoil.

And I was increasingly both disillusioned by -- and hopeful about -- much of that. The moral center of our lives seemed to have drifted off into consumerism and into ignoring the economic, political and other systems that were crushing some of our citizens. I took all of that on in some of the poetry I was writing. But I also was finding my own moral bearings with the help of some of the poetry, theology and other works I was reading.

I was particularly moved by W. H. Auden's poem, "September 1, 1939," about the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Auden began by bemoaning "a low dishonest decade." And he pointed to the future with these lines:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

But then, at the end, this clear-eyed poet told all of us what, in fact, all of us already knew but were choosing to forget or ignore:

Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

And there it is, our task: To show an affirming flame. We must act now with justice and must overcome whatever "negation and despair" we've fallen into after this election. We must move ahead -- no matter who won yesterday -- and show that we have not abandoned our freedoms, our individual sovereignty, our mutual citizenship.

On-FreedomIn Timothy Snyder's new book, On Freedom, he writes about what he calls "negative freedom," which is the bogus idea that we can be free only if certain restraints are removed. He puts it this way: "Negative freedom is the fantasy that the problem is entirely beyond us, and that we can become free simply by removing an obstacle." Freedom, he says, requires sovereign, autonomous individuals who know how to be free and, thus, unpredictable, even in societies that seek to crush those attributes. Such individuals are sovereign, unpredictable and mobile.

"Russia," he writes, "has become a genocidal fascist empire for many reasons, but one of them is negative freedom. That concept made it hard to see that its oligarchy was the antithesis of freedom (rather than a side effect) or that Putin was a fascist (rather than just a technocrat seeking wealth). And America has become a flawed republic threatened by oligarchy and fascism for many reasons, but negative freedom is among them. It leads us to think that we have solved our problems when we have privatized them, when in fact all we have achieved is separating ourselves from one another."

What we need, then, no matter who won yesterday's presidential election, is to come together as a common people whose roots are in many places and ethnic, religious and cultural traditions, a common people dedicated to the idea that this is a nation of, by and for the people. If we fail in that task, we risk sacrificing what the United States has meant to the freedom of the world and its people. And the world cannot afford anything like that.

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WHERE I VOTE, THE SYSTEM WORKED

When I arrived at my polling place yesterday morning next door to where I live, it appeared that there was almost no line. I prefer to use the voting machines, which print out my ballot. So I was told there were a few people ahead of me but to wait at the end of that line of eight or nine voters.

COR-res-24It soon became clear that one of the only two voting machines was being used by someone who seemed catatonic. She just sat there. Eventually one of the poll workers told some of us in line that he was not allowed to tell voters to hurry up. But after 40-plus minutes, the young woman seemed to appeal for help. So, as required by law, two poll workers, one from each party, sat with her and answered whatever questions she had. Eventually, she finished.

People died so I could be free to vote in such elections, so it was no big deal to wait a few extra minutes for a confused -- and perhaps new -- voter to finish. I was just glad the system worked. Oh, and that the Brookside branch of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection (pictured here), my voting place, had set out three boxes of candy as a way of thanking voters. (I took only one small piece, just for the record.)

* * *

P.S.: I was honored that my blog was a finalist this year in The Pitch's contest for "Best Local Blog/Substack". You can find a list of the winners and finalists here.

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