Bigger Than You Or Me
Time to get personal.
On Saturday afternoon, my better half and I took a walk to the local park. It was about 2 PM in the afternoon and it was an unseasonably warm New England November day. As we made our way to the park through a local backwoods trail, we could hear the shrikes of joy as we approach the main park area. As we approached, there were children playing, couples enjoying a view of the lake on a blanket, and families grilling out. By better half and I sat on a bench looking at the lake but also people watching, our eyes gravitating toward a Muslim family nearby preparing food and having the children piling leaves and joyously walking through them. I looked over at my better half, an immigrant here doing postdoctoral research, and that's when it all hit me.
This is why we fight.
We fight for ourselves. We fight for those we know. We fight for those we have not met. For those we may never meet. We fight for those unborn and for future generations. We fight for those who have been unjustly taken away. We fight for those caught up in a racist criminal justice system. We fight for those who came to this country for a better life, just as our ancestors did. We fight for the right for everyone to marry the partner of their choosing regardless of sexual orientation. We fight for our military to be egalitarian and to do discriminate against anyone due to their gender identity. We fight to have access to the ballot for every citizen and to remove voting restrictions. We fight so that we will leave this planet better than when we found it.
My America was in full display at that park on Saturday afternoon. But it wasn't just my America. It was the America of 76 million voters and counting. There are, and have always been, more of us than there are of them. But they are loud. They've been emboldened these past 4 years to proudly wear their MAGA hats, the 21st century version of a KKK robe. Over 71 million of them saw the excrement that Trump has been serving these past four years and they proudly proclaimed, "Seconds, please!" Trump was no longer an unknown entity. There was no hope for a "presidential pivot" away from his boisterous rhetoric. They saw kids in cages, climate denial, emboldened White supremacists, abandoned troops, a shattered economy, and a culture of science denial and death and wanted four more years of all of it. They wanted to make America great again...again. They wanted four more years of chaos, death, and destruction.
They won't get it.
At least, not to the level they hoped. A Joe Biden presidency like that of Barack Obama will largely involve cleaning up the mess left by a Republican predecessor. Already, Biden has plans in place to solidify DACA, reenter the United States into the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoin the WHO, repeal the Muslim Ban, and repeal the military transgender ban. And that's just the stuff he'll start with. Joe Biden has already announced his COVID-19 Advisory Board, consisting of actual scientists rather than self-flattering sycophants or partisan hacks. Joe Biden will immediately restore America's standing in the world as has already been shown by the congratulatory calls from Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, and Emmanuel Macron among others. If he can secure a Democratic Senate then that opens up the door even more for potential immigration reform, climate legislation, a liberal Supreme Court justice, and, oh by the way, over 400 bills, many of them bipartisan, that have been sitting in the political purgatory that has become Mitch McConnell's office.
These are the policies that 76+ million of us voted for. That's why so many of us voted. We knew that none of this gets done with Donald Trump at the helm. Nothing we care about gets done with a second Trump term. People could not endure 4 more years of what we had already endured. We were tired. Tired of the apathy. Tired of the tweeting. Tired of the corruption. Tired of the vulgarity. Tired of the Trump presidency.
America isn't perfect. Not by a long shot. Our history is riddled with genocide and White supremacy and systemic injustice. But those of good on the side of good work to make it better. We work to create a more just union. We fail. A lot. Yet at the end of the day, everything we do is to create the type of world we envision for ourselves and for our children. It is a world that today seems a lot closer than it did the day before Election Day. That, in itself is progress and it is that progress, that tantalizingly slow progress, that keeps each and every one of us in the fight. Because we know this is a fight worth fighting.
And we know this is a fight bigger than you or me.
On Saturday afternoon, my better half and I took a walk to the local park. It was about 2 PM in the afternoon and it was an unseasonably warm New England November day. As we made our way to the park through a local backwoods trail, we could hear the shrikes of joy as we approach the main park area. As we approached, there were children playing, couples enjoying a view of the lake on a blanket, and families grilling out. By better half and I sat on a bench looking at the lake but also people watching, our eyes gravitating toward a Muslim family nearby preparing food and having the children piling leaves and joyously walking through them. I looked over at my better half, an immigrant here doing postdoctoral research, and that's when it all hit me.
This is why we fight.
We fight for ourselves. We fight for those we know. We fight for those we have not met. For those we may never meet. We fight for those unborn and for future generations. We fight for those who have been unjustly taken away. We fight for those caught up in a racist criminal justice system. We fight for those who came to this country for a better life, just as our ancestors did. We fight for the right for everyone to marry the partner of their choosing regardless of sexual orientation. We fight for our military to be egalitarian and to do discriminate against anyone due to their gender identity. We fight to have access to the ballot for every citizen and to remove voting restrictions. We fight so that we will leave this planet better than when we found it.
My America was in full display at that park on Saturday afternoon. But it wasn't just my America. It was the America of 76 million voters and counting. There are, and have always been, more of us than there are of them. But they are loud. They've been emboldened these past 4 years to proudly wear their MAGA hats, the 21st century version of a KKK robe. Over 71 million of them saw the excrement that Trump has been serving these past four years and they proudly proclaimed, "Seconds, please!" Trump was no longer an unknown entity. There was no hope for a "presidential pivot" away from his boisterous rhetoric. They saw kids in cages, climate denial, emboldened White supremacists, abandoned troops, a shattered economy, and a culture of science denial and death and wanted four more years of all of it. They wanted to make America great again...again. They wanted four more years of chaos, death, and destruction.
They won't get it.
At least, not to the level they hoped. A Joe Biden presidency like that of Barack Obama will largely involve cleaning up the mess left by a Republican predecessor. Already, Biden has plans in place to solidify DACA, reenter the United States into the Paris Climate Agreement, rejoin the WHO, repeal the Muslim Ban, and repeal the military transgender ban. And that's just the stuff he'll start with. Joe Biden has already announced his COVID-19 Advisory Board, consisting of actual scientists rather than self-flattering sycophants or partisan hacks. Joe Biden will immediately restore America's standing in the world as has already been shown by the congratulatory calls from Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel, and Emmanuel Macron among others. If he can secure a Democratic Senate then that opens up the door even more for potential immigration reform, climate legislation, a liberal Supreme Court justice, and, oh by the way, over 400 bills, many of them bipartisan, that have been sitting in the political purgatory that has become Mitch McConnell's office.
These are the policies that 76+ million of us voted for. That's why so many of us voted. We knew that none of this gets done with Donald Trump at the helm. Nothing we care about gets done with a second Trump term. People could not endure 4 more years of what we had already endured. We were tired. Tired of the apathy. Tired of the tweeting. Tired of the corruption. Tired of the vulgarity. Tired of the Trump presidency.
America isn't perfect. Not by a long shot. Our history is riddled with genocide and White supremacy and systemic injustice. But those of good on the side of good work to make it better. We work to create a more just union. We fail. A lot. Yet at the end of the day, everything we do is to create the type of world we envision for ourselves and for our children. It is a world that today seems a lot closer than it did the day before Election Day. That, in itself is progress and it is that progress, that tantalizingly slow progress, that keeps each and every one of us in the fight. Because we know this is a fight worth fighting.
And we know this is a fight bigger than you or me.