WARNING: this is a political post and I promise I will get there.
That’s code for ugh – one, politics we are all over, and two, yeah – verbose up ahead.
You may have noticed the new forthcoming site that I’ve mentioned a few times is nowhere yet to be seen. Here’s why: how can I blog to an audience of girls about all this be who you are, don’t fall for the wrong guy, don’t do what you think society tells you to do, don’t be a flaming hypocrite, etc. etc. and then turn right around and create some blog that isn’t me? I site which I am vacillating between making all politically correct, sweet sounding, flowy and flowery just because that’s what will “sell” and people will like and the opposite of that (me).
I’d like to rattle off the classic martyr-like excuse-laden justification of, “Well, I really don’t know who I am” – but that’d be a lie. I know exactly who I am, who I am not, who I want to continue to evolve to be, and yes, who I am (early) voting for in 2 hours.
Yesterday afternoon I received a text from Liv asking if I was busy which is code for she wants me to call her. I miss that girl like crazy – always, but especially lately – so I immediately got un-busy. I had just picked up my car from an oil change that happens now like every other week and was on my way to the library to vote. It’s almost 5:00, I had been awake since 3:00am, I’m behind on a zillion things and yes, that’s all code for…I was crabby.
So we’re talking about usual stuff, dissecting why people do what they do, why college is an endurance test, why life is harder than we’d all like it to be and then I see it: a line wrapped around the building. In at least helpful fashion, it was almost stretching to Bdubs across the street. Lord knows everyone’s gonna need a beer or twelve after casting their vote.
“Ugh,” I interrupt her.
“What, Mom?”
“The line to vote is ridiculously long at the library. I’ll go tomorrow instead.”
“Who are you voting for?” she asks.
Now, that question gave me pause. Not because I didn’t know the answer or am still in any way, shape or form on the fence. But rather because she genuinely wanted to know and, I was intimating from her tone, the reasons why.
So I tell her who’s getting my vote.
“Wait, Whaaaa? Really? Why?” she apoplectically asked in response to mine.
“Well, primarily because I am more in line with that person’s key issues and I’m honestly SO sick of being on this back and forth decision-making roller coaster – I had to be done.”
I went on to substantiate a bit more, when it was Liv’s turn to interrupt.
“You know, it’d be nice if we could vote for a President AND a good person.”
Ah, not only does she totally get it as usual, the first election in which my baby girl is able to cast a vote…and she doesn’t want to.
Just like she told me months ago that she is “no longer a Christian.”
Let me clarify that last one because as both a human being and her mother, I care infinitely more about it than the former. She unequivocally is a Christian; that is, she believes in Christ as her Savior. What she is not is, like the 17% increase just last year in millennials across the board, choosing to identify any longer with a religion.
She doesn’t want to vote, and she doesn’t want to go to church. How’s THAT for what Thomas Jefferson had to say:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”
We don’t respect anything. We don’t respect each other, we don’t respect authority, Trump doesn’t respect women, and Hillary doesn’t respect anyone other than herself. We are a mess.
We the people.
For all the times in my life I have been objectified by a man, spoken to in the most misogynistic ways you could ever possibly imagine (even and especially by one I was married to), and have had to endure corporate America for twenty-plus years in a world that, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly equal– I am still left with these two choices, just like everyone else.
As I told Liv, people are people. If companies and countries were run by automation and machines, that’d be one thing. But they are not and we know this. They are run by broken, fallible, and no better than each of us – people.
(Btw: Does no one get the irony of the movie Ex Machina? Good grief.)
Men who purport to saying things like, “There’s no way I could EVER vote for Trump because that’s not the kind of man I am and therefore I cannot! and will NOT! support him because it’s disrespectful to my wife, my mother, my daughter…” also at one point or another (as in, yesterday or 5 minutes ago) have objectified a woman. They may not have said the words out loud, but the thoughts of look at her…man, she’s <fill in the blank>…look at those <fill in the blank>…what did my wife just say to me, I didn’t hear her because I was busy looking elsewhere…those thoughts happened and let me be clear – it makes you a hypocrite.
Women who purport to saying things like, “There’s no way I could EVER vote for Trump because he disrespects women! He hates women! He said nasty things about women!” …also at one point or another (as in, yesterday or 5 minutes ago) either went home to a man who has made statements about “hot” women on TV/their former conquests or have themselves checked out a fellow woman in the grocery store and judged her, thereby objectifying her. Let me be clear – it makes you a hypocrite.
We are all hypocrites, we are all broken and flawed, we are all people, people.
My point is not to sound like a feminist man-hater or reduce my girl squad by any members. I assure you, I love people and the relationships I have in my life more than I love watching Cleveland win NBA Championships and World Series. I love my husband, my dad, and other very respectable men who DO treat women well. And I love my mom, my daughter, and other very respectable women who navigate misogynist waters on a daily basis, break glass ceilings and still find time to be not tired and go home and please everyone else in their lives. There are many, many amazingly good and true and kind human beings in this world of both genders.
But to Liv’s point and I think, the rest of us who will make our own personal decisions, we can’t vote for BOTH a President and a good person. We want it to be part and parcel but unfortunately, it is not. Therefore, in terms of President, I am voting for the one I’d rather see run our country.
Because if I had to teach my daughter all over again about good people, it would be the same lesson: 1 Cor. 15:33: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
If Hillary loses, maybe she’ll have time to go to coffee with me so I can tell her alllll about how to pick a better husband.
