In exactly a hundred days I’ll be forty years old. And as I mark the completion of my fourth decade on earth, Americans will go to the polls in what will be most likely be a turning point in our country’s history. Put another way, it could be the best, or worst, day of my life.
Now, I want to say up front I’ve never been much for birthdays. Gifts and parties aren’t really my thing (my wife can attest to this). But this year I do want something. Something very specific, and something very difficult to obtain. What I want for my birthday, all I want, is to repudiate fascism in America. Because, I don’t know about you, but if it goes the other way I don’t want to spend the second half of my life in some bullshit autocracy.
Oh, so you think I’m exaggerating? I understand. Political pundits oft hyperbolize election cycles as being “the most important of our lifetime.” The persistent, dire warnings can only be repeated so many times before it becomes routine. But it really does feel different this time, doesn’t it?
I mean, not that it hasn’t been years in the making, but the U.S. sort of went off the rails in 2020. A botched response to a pandemic killed 150,000 Americans (and counting). Anonymous feds are beating and snatching up protestors. We face a president openly threatening to dispute election results and questioning ballots that haven’t even been mailed. From the Oval Office this abhorrent, greasy, shit-stain of a human being spreads fecal matter every time he opens his mouth. He tweets pseudo illiterate hate speech in between binging segments of Fox News, then orders storm troopers to cities across the county as a means to stir chaos. And that’s just on a typical a Thursday.
There is outrage, to be sure, but too much of this has gone by without stiff rebuke. I get that about a third of the country is acting like a cult. But what of the rest of us? There are still too many interested bystanders, and not enough active participants.
Maybe it’s because we’re not feeling it hard enough just yet. Maybe it’s privilege or wealth or geography that’s shielded some people from the the effects. Or maybe it’s like Trump has us hooked up to an I.V., and dose by dose, he’s taken all the offenses Americans used to think they would never stand for, and poisoned us to believe it’s just business as usual. This is a dangerous path.
So many of our citizens, perhaps fooled by nonsense about exceptionalism, believe that we are immune to the tragic fates of other great empires. That we can ignore our past transgressions, and our present failings, and still assure our future. But we can’t. Checks and balances are meaningless if you have a legislative body full of enablers and a tyrant willing to break every single norm.
I think of our liberal democracy like a Range Rover at a railroad crossing. Here we are, in this gas guzzling tank of an SUV, and we feel invincible. No one on the road can mess with us. We see the flashing yellow lights and we can hear the ding-ding-ding bell warning of of an oncoming train, and the gate swings down to block our way. But then we drive right around the impasse, creep onto the track, and stick that baby into park. Why? Because fuck you, that’s why. Freedom! And even as the runaway locomotive barrels towards us, its whistle shrieking in agony, we think to ourselves, “We’re good, we can take it. No big deal. America rolls with the punches, always has. We’re safe in here, man.”
No. You’re really not.
I get that not all of us are going to toe the line at protests or take a rubber bullet in the face. But I’m in shock that the vast majority of people are not more enraged right now. That every Facebook post I see isn’t a call for some sort of rally or revolution.
Maybe the rage is there, bubbling just beneath the surface, but there is hesitancy to express it. Maybe they think resistance is futile, or perhaps folks are scared to alienate their social network, or their co-workers, or their boss, or their siblings. Maybe they’re too frightened to rock the boat of the status quo, because well, it could be worse. The thing is, the status quo is moving under your feet, and whether you know it or not, it’s taking you to a place you probably don’t want to go.
And look, I know you know what I’m going to say next. A corny speech about shared responsibility and civic duty. But since I sound like a pompous jackass rehashing well-trodden cliches, I’ll mostly skip that part. Sufficed to say, the hokeyness of the argument doesn’t undercut the self-evidentiary logic, nor the urgency of this moment. We are at a crossroads. Either we move from our present position, en masse, and continue the American experiment, or we suicide our democracy by laying down on the track of tyranny. We can stand still as the freight train of fascism smashes the system to bits, or we can try to push the car out of danger. Dealer’s choice.
And please don’t fool yourself about this. If your decision is to make no decision, then you are still passively choosing a side. That’s because to an authoritarian, silence is consent. And if you opt out of the process, then you are, by default, consenting to whatever happens next. The questions we must ask ourselves, therefore, are binaries. Do you believe in freedom or fascism? Reason or propaganda? Light or darkness? And if you’re sure on your answers, then the choice of candidates is pretty fucking obvious.
I don’t think Joe Biden is some kind of savior, but his campaign is now the vessel through which our better angels travel. He is a proxy, and he is imperfect, but he is decent. For now, decency will have to do. We’ll have to figure the rest out later––and we all know there is a lot to still yet figure.
In the mean time, here’s my advice: Talk to each other. Organize, just a little bit. Express concerns and start thinking about worst case scenarios, and plan your responses. If you’re a little brave, you’ll record a video or write a post and share it with your friends. And if you’re a goddamn super hero, you’ll show up at rally and risk life and limb. In between those two acts of engagement are lots of levels and variations of getting involved. For example, a teacher friend of mine put together a Google Doc with myriad ways you can strategically donate, write letters, or volunteer online. Everything counts, and everyone can do something. So why not just start?
I get it, it’s super uncomfortable. Definitely not the norm. But we live in an era of abnormality, and it’s time we embrace that. Frankly, we owe it both to ourselves, and the hundreds of millions of people who will walk in our footsteps. Even if we strike out on reforming our democracy over the coming decades, even if wealth and racial disparities persist, don’t our ancestors deserve an appearance at the plate? To slip into authoritarianism would not only deny governance to ourselves, but to generations of Americans to follow.
So if you’re having thoughts that put a tremble in your heart, then good. Follow that instinct. Speak to those concerns publicly, and seek out like-minded folks. Because this is urgent and it does matter.
To use the metaphor of our time, there is a strain of political thought in our country that is spreading like a virus. It is mutating our rule of law and crippling our institutions. The only ones that can stop the plague are the uninfected. We, those people of good conscience, can and must form the cells that may repel the disease. And if we don’t, might we look back and wonder in horror, could we have done more?
In the end, my dream is this: I hope that a friend might phone me late at night on Nov. 3 to wish me a nearly-belated happy birthday (most people text these days, but you never know). By the hour of their call the elections results will be in on the west coast. The analysts are in agreement. It’s over, a landslide. And as I watch the balloons come down on television a smile creases my face and my friend asks how it feels to have finally hit the big 4-0.
“Pretty damn good,” I reply. “Because I’m an American, and I believe in standing up and making an argument, and I believe that a good argument, like a good idea, can change the world. And today my country gave me the greatest gift a citizen could possibly receive. Today she told fascism to go fuck itself, and honestly it feels kind of amazing to live in a place where people are still making that argument.”
In any case, that’s where I want to be in a hundred days. And you know, since it’s my birthday and all, I was hoping you might be able to help me out.
What do you say?
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