Election Day Sucker Punch: Van Jone’s Tears and a Dream Coming to Birth
“Partisan hack.”
That’s me, according to a social media follower I don’t know, have never met and was unaware even existed until they used a really bad word to let me know I have been summarily blocked.
Such vitriol strikes at the heart of my reticence towards posting anything political. Publicly, I’ve been intentionally circumspect about my political leanings. Part personal, part professional and large part in attempt to avoid this precise kind of animus. Whether bleeding red or blue, we can all agree the 2020 presidential election was a doozy. Months of anger, accusations, debates and confrontations came down to three days of nail-biting suspense as electoral college numbers inched towards 270. When projections started coming in on Saturday, out of relief the end was near, I made an exception to a personal boundary, ventured into the shallow end and posted my thoughts. To be called a “f*cking idiot” for exercising my free speech inalienable right, feels like being sucker punched in a bruise that’s still tender to the touch.
We’re all smarting and trying to heal. What we the people have been through this year will take some convalescing. Work we’ll do amid protestations, lawsuits, recounts, and memories.
Memories of how we rallied and hoped and prayed. Memories of who and what we supported and why. Memories we’ll recall when we tell our children of this day.
Through all of this, as a Black parent who has had “the talk”, held my breath, and worried somebody was going to say something or do something to me or my child, I have tried to model faith, and a battered belief in the inherent goodness of people. I’ve chosen to hang my hope on progressive history. I remind my offspring of the times when this country, albeit bitterly and begrudgingly, and very late, nonetheless did the right thing. The Emancipation Proclamation. The Women’s Suffrage Movement. The Civil Rights Act. The Voter Rights Act. Though far from perfect or resolute, these moments in time, fueled by courageous dreamers, dare takers and history makers, became movements in America’s history. Yet, borrowing from the arsenal of any seasoned political orator, there still is much work to be done. The outing of this nation’s systemic racism has forever cast an unforgiving light on just how big that job is, and it is work that won’t get done without the 70 million voters who were hoping for a different result.
For me, and 74 million others, the election’s outcome signals another historic chapter, an inflection point and deliberate choice to pivot in a more civil and just direction.
And so, on Saturday, I wept.
I went outside and held my face to the sun. I heard car horns and music through speakers. I saw rippling flags, and waving banners.
I felt the wind produce a crackle of falling leaves. I saw children skip on the pavement and sing. I saw lovers hand in hand and neighbors who had never met sharing free beer.
I thought, maybe this is what it looks like when purple bruises begin to heal.
Maybe this is how the budding moments of wholeness feel; the constricting tightness I have unconsciously been carrying finally finds air.
I watched CNN political commentator Van Jones, a grown a*s Black man, express on national television, through tears and snot, the very belief, the very relief and very words on which I have anchored my hope:
“Character matters. Telling the truth matters.
Being a good person matters.”
If believing that, if posting that makes me a ‘f*cking idiot’, then you sir, whomever you are, have had your say.
I now too have had mine:
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself in our mirth;And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.- Arthur O’Shaughnessy ,“Ode”
