Election day

Sympathy? You have got to be kidding. Last week I wrote this rather foul-mouthed diatribe and sent it only to my sister and a friend, knowing it was too raw to share publicly. But after the debate and positive Covid test, I saw people wondering how they should respond. So, I removed the (really) foul language from what I wrote, although it's still raw and I’m still unable to rationally talk about this miserable creature. The man’s ability to blind people to his malice and play the victim is confounding and leaves me unable to simply say, just look at what he’s doing, and my voice goes into near-hysterics as his followers point out all the reasons Hillary should be in jail. I lose my general good humor and flexibility with language and words and instead froth and fume at his continual abhorrent behavior and despicable disrespect for democracy. What’s worse is that he would wipe his filthy ass with the flag if it was nearby, and his followers wouldn’t care because he’d simply say, the left are socialists who don’t love America, and they fall in line and ignore what they just saw and know to be true. And I get apoplectic and start shouting, don’t you see that he just wiped his filthy ass with the flag and that he doesn’t actually care about our country, and they say something about how they suffered under Obama and that Biden will do monstrous things. And I fall over myself and forget how to be calm and rational and instead find myself with bursting blood pressure and the vocabulary of a drunk sailor. My negligent, disrespectful behavior becomes the object of condemnation and I’m left feeling shame-faced at my inability to stand and deliver the indictment this mockery of a leader deserves, a man who would beat his mother before he suffered any discomfort, who would give this great country to Russia in order to protect his guilt, who would sow dissension among Americans and make us mistrust and even hate each other before he would allow his sins against this country to be known, his ruthless plundering of the goodwill that’s been built in neighborhoods for years and years, where Americans, everyday ordinary Americans who are white and black and fifth generation and new immigrants and struggling and loud and poor and brash and irritating and generous and in your face and intimidating and freedom loving and all of us are the real thing, salt of the earth Americans who push cars out of snowbanks and look for lost dogs and he, he wants you and me to think we don’t care about each other or don’t want to sit in our camping chairs next to each other by the curb on Memorial Day when we watch the middle school band and fire department pass by and we cheer and clap as one community, one nation, and it doesn’t matter what party we’re in because we all want a good, safe, strong town and he, that fucking horrible person wants you and me to argue with each other so we ignore him while he grabs and takes and pilfers and pillages and lies lies lies all the time, so indifferent to any facts or the truth that he will say anything he wants, anything he thinks of and won’t care if he’s never thought it before or ever cares about its veracity and he will try to divide you and me and I sit here silent, unable to stand up and point out the raw basic and simple truth that the man is a despot, a desperate, unholy man with no regard for life, certainly not the unborn because he would abort his own child if it inconvenienced him and he will turn and say he loves life and his followers will ignore everything they see the man do and say to one another, see, he cares about life, he just said so, and meanwhile his weak, bloated body festers with his evil soul and when he dies a dark stain of horrid smelling mucous will remain, even after it is hosed down and rained upon, and dogs will avoid it and cringe when its malodorous spirit drifts too close, and nothing will grow there and his grave will be barren and smell of death and the putrid flesh he inhabits now will not return to the earth because the earth will reject it and so it will rot and fester and the spot will forever be known as the stain, and for generations historians scientists and poets and bartenders will gather stories of his and the accumulated wisdom in those tales and books and jokes will let us know that we survived an evil of this magnitude because we finally understood that this almost man was in fact a piece of shit who no more deserved to be admired than the coward he is. And me? I wish I could calmly say all the things that people have been uncovering for years and barely need repeating, the words of diplomats and generals and regular bureaucrats whose public service keeps this country running and we haven’t listened to them, people who have dedicated themselves to putting pieces together and understanding and telling stories so that we’re a smarter, better country, better able to make decisions and face challenges and adversaries and adversity, and their words have already told such a story that I can add nothing new except, perhaps, if I take a few deep breaths, exhaling and inhaling deeply between each one, and center myself with a decade of Hail Marys as I am wont to repeat when I run, walk, or feel restless and unsettled, when I know that I am agitated and perhaps not thinking straight and when I call to mind the wisdom innocence grit fear courage and generosity of Mary I know that my foul mouth diatribe does no good and probably only incenses his followers and that the stillness of Mary when her spirit is troubled and she wonders if God is with her, if God is, if she knows anything, and somehow she, she who is young and naïve and bare footed is the one to teach me, the one I should listen to and look to for guidance and courage and an example and I think she would tilt her head down and to the side and pass him by silently, shrinking a bit into herself hoping to pass by unnoticed because he’s the kind of bully coward who would taunt a young girl, mock a disabled man, and make their hard life even harder by his hubris and callous tongue, his hands rapacious paws that claw and swat what’s nearby as he manhandles even the new fruit just brought to market, and he makes even that feel dirty, and I remember Mary and her calm and pray to have some of the patience and restraint she does, and some of her strength to expose this man who is wholly unfit to occupy an office held by some of the most courageous and honorable men to have lived in this country of ours, this one nation under God. But it’s unlikely I’ll gain any patience or wisdom from Mary or anyone else because I’m still sitting here, fretting about November and wondering how in the world we Americans can’t see what the rest of the world can, that the man debases the dream of America, the idea of America, and that’s really what we are, an idea, born in the restlessness of centuries of people who chafed at being the youngest, the poorest, the kookiest beliefs, the frightened sad and lonely ones who made their way here and in one generation or ten became Americans and fought against some of the despots and dictators and regimes that threatened that idea, that idea that there is a place in this world where you don’t have to be from a certain class or race, that you can show up and be part of the mix, part of the fabric that we’ve woven, so I just want you to know that this blustering slick talking talking from the hip using his gut to rouse people into malice kind of almost man isn’t my choice on election day. What about you?