nov 2, 2020

Today is November 2, 2020. It is Election Day Eve. Today feels very important to me.

I want to write about that. I want to reflect on my deep, deep love of politics and my complicated relationship to my own Americanness, and how profound it felt to vote in my first presidential election and how surreal it felt that it was this particular election.

None of that feels important right now.

Here we find ourselves on the cusp of what people are calling the most important election of our lifetimes. No pressure, but whichever party wins, it seems that it will spell doom for the other and annihilate everything that’s good about this country.

I don’t think that’s true, either way.

I am writing this because I know how much politics matter. I know how much they matter to me. I pay rapt attention all the time, and it felt important and special for me to get to vote for the president of the United States. I want a record of what today felt like. I want to remember that is was a cool and windy day in Orlando, that I had an exam this morning and I have rehearsal tonight, and that I had pancakes and eggs for dinner.

There is a weird sense of uneasiness on the internet and among my circles today. We all know that tomorrow begins what could be a very long process of…reckoning? Transition? Grief? Recovery? We don’t really know what’s coming. We just know that it is.

It feels hard to focus on much else. Social media is plastered with Vote! stickers and warnings, the news is constant election updates, it feels like a constant hushed whisper of fear is just hanging around. There is a bone-deep kind of national anxiety. We don’t know if we’re going to get through it. Will friendships survive? Will the transition be peaceful? Will anything ever feel bipartisan again? Can all of the chaos of this year be fixed?

I don’t know. I remember last Election Day, my senior year of high school. We had a work period in English class, and I obsessively watched polling numbers come in and vote tallies start to finalize instead of editing the paper due the next week. Later that school year, I was voted “most likely to be a politician.” My brother and I both, actually, a fact that still makes me smile. I was a nerd who read policy proposals for fun and could discuss them ad nauseum. He was charming and active in MUN. We were both in student government. Now, four years later, he is hard at work on a Congressional campaign in the last days of election season, and I am preparing to start rehearsals for another virtual reading of a new play to make use of my theatre degree, and 2016 feels a world away.

Mostly, this year has felt a thousand years long and I am just tired. I’m tired of losing things to the pandemic. I’m tired of cheap political tricks and low moves. I’m tired of ugly hyper-partisanship. I think that’s part of why this election feels like it has so much riding on it: it has been an awful, terribly long campaign.

And that ends tomorrow. Or at least, starts to end.

I hope we can all sleep well soon. I hope we can talk about other things. I hope we don’t bristle quite as much when politics come up. I hope everything feels a little less angry.

I don’t know who will win this election. It doesn’t feel helpful right now to cite polls and make predictions. I do think the next term of the presidency will determine a lot about our nation, who we are and what we value and the direction in which we’re headed. I think it matters who we elect, and I hope he and his administration do right by us. I really do. I hope the version of America we choose to believe in is better than the one we live in now.

I want us to be better. But I also know that there are some things that I think are truer than American democracy, truer than governments and power and far outstripping campaign promises. Somehow, all of this will be redeemed. All of this is, actively, being redeemed.

Today, this week, and for the foreseeable future, I am choosing to believe that more than I believe in the process of American democracy. Whoever the president is for the next four years. However the world looks in the coming days, weeks, months, years. No party or policy perfectly reflects what I believe to be the truest, realest Kingdom with the truest, realest truth and governance. No one upholds objective truth perfectly, no party platform purely just or right or good.

Your vote matters. Civic engagement is important. We don’t get to check out of this messiness or dismiss it with platitudes. Approaching this tension thoughtfully and humbly is how we love our neighbor and live our convictions. How we voted matters, and how we respond in the coming days matters. That weight of responsibility is real.

But the world is bigger than this. Time will go on. Things will change and there will be new things we disagree on, things that we agree on, things that scare us, things that bring us hope. Take a deep breath.

I’m writing this because I know how much I care about politics. I know how monumental this feels to me. I know I have a tendency to project far into the future, shuffling all the variables around, and ranking the potential outcomes. That’s tempting tonight, as I have read a hundred analyses and predictions and I’ve been preparing for a long time to run the numbers in real time(!!) and watch history being made. I love politics, and I don’t want my respect for the institution tarnished by the chaos and vitriol and anxiety that it feels like we just live in these days.

Maybe I will still watch results come in live tomorrow night. I haven’t decided yet. But if I do, I want to do so with grace, prayerfully, and with open hands. It matters. But it will be okay.

May there be peace, personally and nationally, whatever comes. May we have good leaders who lead wisely and well. May they faithfully execute their office to preserve, protect and defend our nation and may we have the courage to demand better of them when they fall short of good things.

May we be one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.