a letter
*written by z the evening of 8/17/2020
(after quite a few weeks thinking about it)
I’ve been going back and forth for a while thinking about whether I should send this letter, but I think it’s too important not to. It’s about politics, the election, and what’s happening to our country, few people’s favorite set of topics. I apologize for a long letter, but I hope you’ll read on anyway. And I’m honestly not expecting any kind of response.
As time goes on I’m more and more sure that what our political conversations lack is good faith, the trust that those we are talking to come to the conversation with earnest, honest intentions. I worry I won’t be able to communicate as clearly as I’d like to, but please just know that my intention is to be honest with you about how I’ve been thinking and feeling, and to try and show you how things look from my perspective, and maybe open up yours a little, as well as my own. What I don’t intend is to guilt, blame, lecture, yell at, or even really convince you. I am not a person who thinks everyone needs to have the exact same values and opinions as me, but I do wish there were more forthright, meaningful, even difficult, conversations between people who might disagree but come to the table with a spirit of good faith and collaboration.
Here is the blunt part: it will break my heart to learn that someone that I know and love voted to keep this White House administration in power. I worry that that will come across as manipulative, and I thought for a long time about how I could word that differently, but I think there’s no point in overcomplicating things. There is a very long list of specific reasons why this is true, I suspect you may know many of them, though I worry you have not been told the whole story, either because it’s in certain “news” purveyors’ interests for their audiences not to know the full story, or because the relentlessly terrible news cycle has pushed you away from wanting to hear about any of it. That last part is certainly something I feel, but I also feel very strongly that the stakes are too high to turn away at this moment. I would honestly be honored to discuss any particular issue, be it the literally hundreds of thousands of people needlessly getting sick and dying because of executive incompetence and malice, imprisoned children, giant backward steps in nearly every variety of civil rights, the crippling of scientific research at every level of our government, historically brazen corruption, the dramatic decline of our country’s global reputation, the demolition of our postal system, EPA, and open fair elections, or honestly a thousand other things. Donald Trump promised to tear down the system, and in many ways he’s succeeded, in the process enabling the suffering and death of thousands both here and abroad, a sharp turnaround in the standing of our country built over centuries, the poisoning of what healthy dialogue remained on life support, and a complete tanking of the economy for all but a small number of wealthy stockholders. I’m sorry I don’t mean to go on, again I say those things not to lecture but to try and convey what feels like a mountain of problems, a parade of horribles, to say that there is a lot of feeling behind this letter that I don’t think this is necessarily the place to go through, and to say I am open to discussing any and all.
If I thought the stakes were mere political disagreement I would not be writing this. I would not risk upsetting someone I care about or potentially hurting a relationship with family if I didn’t know the stakes were much higher than that. I’m scared for the future of my country, for the many decades I hopefully have before me. The basic point for me is that this election is not between a liberal and a conservative, it’s between one person who is trying to resuscitate the American system that has taken a severe beating, and another person who wants to destroy it, who has already had a lot of success doing so, who doesn’t care about the future, doesn’t care about me, or you, or really anyone, perhaps only himself, but even that I’m doubting lately. You might say the system was already pretty thoroughly screwed up, and I wouldn’t disagree with that, but from my honest viewpoint, there will be nowhere for our country to go if we have 4 more years of this. There will be no system to fix or to tear down, which is perhaps slightly overdramatic but honestly not that far off the truth in my assessment. Trump will presumably be gone within the next decade or so, but I and Calum and his and my siblings and everyone else in our generation will be dealing for the rest of our lives with the consequences of his malevolent incompetence, short-sightedness, childish emotional tantrums, and all the amoral people he’s welcomed into our government. It’s not worth it.
Maybe it’s worth adding that I’m not a Republican or a Democrat, I don’t “identify” as a liberal or a conservative. I am not a “social justice warrior,” though I do wholeheartedly support social justice. I am concerned with the state of free speech, but I cannot side with either side of the “free speech” debate (or maybe I agree with both, but also disapprove of both sides’ tactics and assumptions about the other). I am an independent, a radical pragmatist, and a pragmatic radical, I believe things can be a lot better than most people think if we earnestly engage and aim high, that’s the radical part, but I also believe in the real world, that we work with what we have, that we can’t teleport from chaos to utopia just by wanting it bad enough, that’s the pragmatic part. My fundamental values are love for the entire universe and everything that makes it up, and truth through falsifiability, the insistence that none of my beliefs are ironclad dogmas, but the best choices from the best evidence, which will change if I get more information or new evidence. These are my motivations. I’m not denying that I come from a family and community of mostly liberals, and that my voting record usually aligns with progressives, but it’s important to me to say that the perspective I’ve tried to describe comes from my rejection of the identity politics and dogmatism that characterize both the people who are supposed to be my political “allies” and “enemies.” I often find myself feeling on both sides of issues, like if people would just understand each others’ values and viewpoints slightly more, then they’d see they don’t need to be arguing. Naïve maybe, or just hopeful, I still haven’t really figured out how to communicate these things (as may be obvious at this point).
But despite that I do need to say that the proverbial “two sides” are not equivalent. Biden was not my choice, for a variety of reasons, but he is the only one in this race trying to win honestly, and he is the only one who gives half a shit about the actual citizens and future of this country, even if you or I do have principled disagreements and honest concerns with him or the people around him (and I do). I can’t say those things of the man who many currently call the president (though I do not call him that because I think “president” is not a thing one is, but something one does, and he does not do those things in my opinion—though I hesitate to share this as I suspect you may not agree with that opinion).
This, the election, the future of America, is important to me, and I think it should be to you too, though I obviously can’t force you to have different inclinations or opinions, nor do I want to. In the end my point is not that you should vote for Democrats (though I do hope you would), but that the stakes are very high, and for that reason I hope I can encourage you to seek more information, to question the beliefs and motivations of those who want to sway you to action or inaction, put yourself in the shoes of those you disagree with, and above all, believe that positive change is possible. It is miserable and stressful and makes lots of interactions difficult, but it really is important, I hope you won’t turn away from politics when it’s more important than I think it has ever been in either of our lifetimes. I’m here to discuss or clarify or just listen. I am genuinely interested to hear how we might disagree on certain things, and it needn’t always be one person trying to convince the other. I send this with a spirit of genuine love, patriotism, and concern for the future, and I hope it might be received with the same.