What if it doesn’t work? What if the voice of the people isn’t loud enough?
What if voter suppression negates too many votes? How is it that Debbie Cox from Dodge City hasn’t been arrested for her involvement in moving a single polling place for thousands of poor people out of town, out of reach, and with the wrong address on the labels?
What if nobody fixes those machines that were set to switch blue votes to red at the last moment? Is that even true or is it an urban myth?
What if gerrymandering has been so effective to have isolated blue votes into an ineffective place? I am an example of someone who has a narrow blue line drawn around my house, a tiny peninsula, that keeps me from voting against a red incumbent, the guy who has had the most influence on my community and Nick’s schools. Our house has been excised from that equation. My vote has been rendered useless.
The Russians have come into our country to ‘monitor the election.’ Doesn’t that give you a chill up your spine? Who let the Russians in and why do they get to ‘monitor’ our election?
So, I’ll admit that I carry a weight of trepidation today. When Mike was in the bedroom getting ready for work this morning and I walked in to talk to him, I saw he had the news on and I backed out the door before I got drawn into it. I am not ready to see.
I don’t exactly know what I’m going to do tomorrow if the blue wave fails to have an impact. I might crawl back under the covers and hide for a while. I might not look at the news for a few weeks. I might go into a mode of grief as if I’d lost a member of the family. It could feel that bad, knowing that children might not escape their cages, that racists will continue to feel they can scream obscenities at people of color, that the caravan will be met with hostility and armaments, that freedom of the press will be repressed, or worse, murdered.
Maybe I’ll take to the streets. Maybe I’ll have the courage to get arrested for standing up against a dictator. Maybe our relatively peaceful way of life will tilt into an age of chaos, driven by a man who can’t remember to get into the limo that waits in front of him, who can’t condemn violence, in fact, encourages it, who openly mocks people of color.
Maybe I’ll write dissident poetry and land in prison with lots of people like you.
Thank you for listening, jules