With the health issues, alcohol has been strictly off limits. Lately, in my old age, I don’t like how hot smoke is, so I tried edibles recently. This isn’t entirely about that, except maybe to explain what led to wanting to do something/anything.
There has been this restlessness building within me. Now, a rational, thinking me might have decided the very best thing to do would have been to take that restlessness and climb on the elliptical trainer and make myself a panting, exhausted mess, then do it again every day thereafter. I chose some random craziness instead. I really think I needed the crazy.
This moment we find ourselves in - every day another insult to the Constitution, elected representatives either being completely and happily complicit, or insisting there is little to be done without a majority anywhere - has been a challenge for all of us. I have tried to be encouraging, to give us ideas, and I have reached out to Democratic Party leadership, but I am a little old lady who has remained “Independent” on electoral rolls for most of her life. They haven’t been very interested in me.
Worse, the massive heat dome and trying to figure out how to manage how much time, focus, etc., to use here, plus managing an autistic granddaughter, heat making sick more easily - I ended up sick two out of five weekdays last week, which really upset me. As I began to analyze the feelings, I described it as my heart and soul being chained to concrete. There is SO MUCH I want to be doing right now. If I could find the money and the backing (and were healthy), I would be running a campaign. I would be thrilled to be campaigning to bring back accountability to office.
I am trapped between what my heart and soul are screaming to do, and the weight that traps me in the body I inhabit. Do I even have the time? Do we even have the time? I remind myself of a cheap latex balloon tethered with string to a concrete block. Bobbing, occasionally blown sideways, and never free of what keeps me, powerless to move away from it.
I know we don’t have the choice. We keep saying things, crafting slogans, agreeing with each other, hearing each other, while I frantically wonder if the people who should hear us are even listening. When the Democratic Party now has me on three or four different ways of asking me for money (five if I add Robert Reich’s text messages), I feel more like a completely impoverished cash cow and less like a “constituent.” When I am told that we should only focus on “saving our country” but refuse to agree on running on more than getting Trump out of office, I have to wonder who we are saving our country for? One person was kind enough to tell me that there were ways to phrase things that make them more agreeable, which I agree with that.
But I worry, and feel sad, because, if we are going to do our best to be “totally electable” and land somewhere between “progressive” and “the Trump agenda,” we are talking the difference between sustainable Constitutional governance and literally a theonomy. What does the middle between those two look like? Are we going to adopt a platform that the majority of conservative Christians will agree with? Are we going to be sure to run two white males so we don’t upset the complementarians? «that is a serious question, by the way, because I think (sadly) that the electorate is not ready to elect a woman, and will not elect another person of color for awhile. We all kind of realize that Obama being elected twice broke the racists.
“Don’t you know that politics are incremental?”
Right now there is a Supreme Court case for consideration that would eviscerate black voting rights. If they succeed in that, how long of an increment until we restore that? How long until we restore Roe? Or do we not? Do we decide that the White Christian Nationalists deserve to have this country run with a constant awareness that they are fragile flowers who can’t stand the possibility that women deserve respect (unless the respect is under her male headship) or bodily autonomy, and are scared to death that if people with more melanin get too much power they might treat white people like second class citizens?
Do we only run candidates they will elect? Do we only support policies that make them happy? Is it really supposed to be our only goal to get Trump out of office and then try to repair institutional guardrails to hopefully prevent the disassembly of our government another four years later? If we ELECT people that white Christian nationalists can support, can we be sure those candidates will then be willing to enact laws that might protect religious freedom for people who do not believe the same way? What will they do with LGBTQ rights? The Southern Baptist Convention has already stated (just like Project 2025) that marriage is one man, one woman, only two genders exist and you are the gender you are born as, forever. Anything else is SIN.
So I hope you can forgive me. I lost heart for a moment. I am someone who wants to believe that we are capable of being good to each other, and capable of creating a government and world that can work for everyone. I honestly believe more of us want that than don’t. I think the safest way forward is the Democratic Party. There is too much risk of diluting our vote against Trump and keeping MAGA and all that is behind it in power. But I am sometimes not sure the Democratic party can figure out how to be for all of us while negotiating with the donor class. They haven’t realized that there is an ecosystem out here of a lot of people who would be activated and happy to help - no advertising dollars required - if they would just announce that the tax cuts were wrong, they are starving our nation, that we need to invest in a new future that works for all of us.
So. Onward. I will keep trying to inform people about Christian Reconstructionism and all the related movements, and begin to suggest ways to ask questions to people who echo those topics (some will not realize that they have been indoctrinated, because they were raised in it, like I was). I will continue to point out that God defined justice as care of the widow, poor, orphan, and immigrant, to be the voice of the voiceless and defender of the vulnerable. I will continue reaching out to the Democratic Party, asking how I can help, asking if I can share my insights, and hoping that they have a platform that makes sense in the coming elections.
And sometimes I might get really frustrated and need to take a deep breath, but I will be back, and will remain so grateful for all of you who have chosen to come along, and whose words often bring me more hope than you will ever realize.