There is Only One Choice

Kate and I were at a nieces’s wedding a couple years ago when I had a watershed fashion moment. It was an all-in-one wedding I guess you’d call it, the service was at the same spot as the reception. Nice enough place, everything was just so.

During the cocktail hour, Kate and I found ourselves talking with the grandmother of the bride, whom Kate has known for years; she’s a lovely person, warm and engaging. During this conversation I had a horrifying realization; I looked exactly like what I was. I looked like someone who voted for Reagan. My wardrobe hadn’t progressed or changed since the mid ‘80’s. It was one of those things that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Voting for Reagan in 1984 made sense to me. I was 18 and newly on active duty; I didn’t even have a stripe on my collar yet. It was my first election. I didn’t have anything close to an understanding of very much, never mind any sense of nuance. In the binary world view of a young soldier at the height of the Cold War, there was only one choice: “Ronbo”.

The world has changed since the days of Regan and Tip O’Neill sharing a drink and a cigar.

(Tip, if you’re unaware, was a liberal congress critter from Massachusetts, he was also Speaker of the House in the Reagan era. Can you imagine the Republican (or democrat) president today having a civil and social relationship with the democrat (or republican) Speaker of the House?? Those days truly seem to have passed us by.)

Much like Reagan was the only choice for me in 1984, this year there’s only one choice as well. My world view may not be binary any more, but this election sure is.

Our system has become lost in the cults of personality surrounding our political leaders, equally so around the ever impermanent state of the economy and the stock market. Using a short-term bounce one way or another in the price of gas or your 401k isn’t the skillful way to look at this election. Over time everything gets more expensive and what a dollar can do shrinks. That’s true regardless of who’s in office.

This is an election not just about front page current events type issues; immigration, the economy, Ukraine, national defense, etc etc. It’s much more about the ramifications of who steers the direction of the country for the next 4 years and beyond. It’s much more about who fills the next couple seats on the Supreme Court. Much more about the world at large, our history with it, and our role in its future. Much more about our Constitution and republic surviving their biggest threats since the 1860’s. Much more about who we want to be as a nation.

America isn’t about getting what you want, it’s about making sure your neighbor is on equal footing with you. America is about supporting someone who worships differently than you do, perhaps loves differently than you do. America is about tolerance of and being willing to fight and die for ideas you personally may not support.

Demonizing people, what they represent, or where they come from isn’t our path. That’s the path of 20th century dictators; we fought existential wars about that path. That path isn’t the American way.

Our granddaughter will turn two in early 2025. She was born with fewer rights than her mother was born with. That’s a new thing in our shared American experience, and something anyone claiming to be a patriot can’t be proud of.

Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. It’s on us to be responsible and keep our nation on the path our founders laid out for us. Our founders, lest we forget, were immigrants and the children of immigrants.

Recently, our son in law, who like our daughter is on active duty, received an email about a detail he was involved with a couple years ago. The detail involved moving several unidentified sets of American serviceman remains from World War II. These remains were located in a European cemetery; our son in law helped bring them home. The email let him know that one of the sets of remains had been identified, and the soldier in question had been reclassified from missing to killed in action. He was 22 when he was killed. This moved me to tears. The sense of honor our nation has for those who have fallen, regardless of when, fills me with awe.

The sacrifice a 22 year old soldier made in the European theater during WWII wasn’t the act of a sucker. You and I both know better.

This is the time for patriots to stand tall, look at the road ahead, and reject what they know to be the path of tyranny and disdain of the American people. Sure, there is an element of the unknown. There was in Boston in the 1770’s as well…..

Sam