Why I'll Never Get Elected

Should I count the ways?

As far as religion goes, I have members of my family who are Wiccan and atheist, born-again and Catholic. As for politics, I have members who are Socialist and isolationists, neo-cons and Democrats. As for sexuality, excluding transgender-ism (as far as I know), I think we cover every base. We’ve got a lot of social sins wrapped up too: adultery, teenage pregnancy, divorce, drug abuse, alcoholism, lying, swearing, name-calling, and even cheating at Trivial Pursuit -- blatently.

Let’s imagine for fun that my personal history, separate from my families', is as bland as the dry toast most of the media thinks we want in a leader. Let’s just pretend that I am that person with no skeletons, no impurities.

It would not matter how pure or profound or meaningful or possible my ideas might be.

Someone would find my socialist uncle or my drug addict cousin or any other of the people I love who have impacted my life. They would find them and I would be done. Finished.

I sat at a dinner table only a few short weeks after 9/11 with a family member whom I adore who spoke for at least an hour about how we deserved that attack. He talked about how our own tyrannical, capitalist ways – our seething arrogance – caused this horror show. With that, he gestured to the ruins, smoldering still, only miles beyond the glass door that separated us from what the whole world was still watching on TV. He said we had nothing and no one to be sorry for, except for the ENTIRE SCOPE of humanity that we had already ruined.

The burning dead in our own back yard would not change that man. The vitriolic response from his family would not change what he thought: the tear-stained arguments, the facts and figures, the proof of what we knew and of all the things we couldn’t prove: none of that would change what that man believed. He believed it.

I sat in semi-silence, a child in that moment amongst the grown-ups of my life, and I regret that. Later I expressed my outrage to anyone who would listen. Maybe I was afraid of being called a complacent participant, but mostly it was because that no matter his elder-status, I knew that I was grown up enough to shout that he was wrong.

Do I still love this man, despite what he said? Yeah, yes I do.

Does that make me as complicit as he?

I had to make a choice with him – to let go of who he is, or to love him anyway. I made a choice to never forgive what he said, but to get to know him better: to weasel in my ways, my ideas, to prove him wrong.

There is hope for us all, and enough compassion in me to love him still.

Can I count on your vote?