As I pen this column, the winner of the presidential election is still unknown, the candidates are neck-and-neck. Regardless of who wins, it seems this was a very tight race.
On the one hand, this points to the vast divide in our country. Fissures run deep.
On the other hand, a part of me feels glad that it was such a tight race. For this way, whoever emerges the victor, can be left with a more sober feeling, versus a smug one. Whoever wins understands that a very tight race underscores how important it is at this time to coalesce around issues that are common to all of us.
I’ve heard election night political theater compared to the infamous Roman gladiator contests of the past. Partly true, perhaps, but I enjoy participating in elections and in the drama of election night. States are called like chess moves, warranting recalculations in how to clear a path to the golden number of 270 electoral votes. It’s the pleasure watching democracy at work.
Especially at this time in our lives when everything is so instantaneous, available electronically and otherwise, this election night has reminded us, tortuously I might add, that some things you have to wait for.
Here in New York City, all I needed to do to follow the basic gist of the unfolding blue and red color-coded map of America was to keep my window open. The howls that rose from the street below clued me into whether states were being called red or blue.
This past month has been trying. My Facebook feed is not an echo chamber. Leading up to yesterday’s fateful day I’ve been subjected to rants from both the right and the left sides of the political divide. One thing that really bothers me regardless of what side of the aisle it’s coming from is the dehumanization of the opponent, like mocking Joe Biden’s frailty or aging, or transforming Trump’s visage into a blazing red devil.
Different life experiences galvanize people to vote for different candidates. We are not privy to what motivates the wind behind the political sails of any person.
As evidenced by the rows and rows of boarded-up shops, in New York we were warned of and prepared for post-election violence, G-d forbid.
I hope somehow this will be a time for renewal that will tamp down tensions.
I hope we will be able to have bipartisan dialogues and discourse around policy debates.
It starts with each and every one of us. As our actions ripple out into our orbit, and then our orbit touches another orbit, and then another, until one hopes (or at least dreams) that somehow, somewhere, a tipping point is reached.
This doesn’t mean that we do not hold fast to our principles and beliefs. It just means having authentically respectful conversations with people with whom we disagree. In real life. Not on social media. It also doesn’t mean caricatures like every Trump supporter is a racist, every Biden supporter hates America.
While I earnestly hope for the temperature in America to come down a notch or two, I don’t have any illusions about the state of bitter partisanship, expecting some magical pivoting. If anything, I am concerned, especially in our current climate of COVID-19, about the dangers a protracted election result could catalyze.
The two truest article titles I came across that intuitively felt like our country’s current state were, “Either Trump or Biden Will Win But Our Deepest Problems Will Remain” and something like, “We’re Never Going Back To the America of Before.” I’m not into doomsday articles. It’s just that, more than in previous elections, this really is how many people feel.
We each grapple with what we feel is right for the world. For many of us, considering Israel’s existential safety is paramount, too. Each each side feels that voting for the opposing candidate is a catastrophic error.
Whatever happens, I hope we can fight for what we believe in, for ourselves and for our world, not from a place of sometimes blown up victimhood and grievance, but from a place of empowerment and gratitude for being blessed to be free Americans.
At at the end of the day, while there is a sniff of caution in the air at the possibility of winds changing for the worse, right now, we are all just so blessed to live in this American democracy that I hope will continue to flourish safely.
Remember what Benjamin Franklin famously replied upon being asked whether America was a monarchy or a republic, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
Copyright © 2020 by the Intermountain Jewish News
