After the Election

Dear visitor and friend,

The post below is what I wrote the morning after the 2016 Presidential election. Because I believe that Donald Trump should be impeached, I have decided to leave this November 9th, 2016 post as the front-page entry on my site. To read about my books, my teaching, and my journalism, please use the navigation menus at the top of the site homepage.

I am making this post primary not because I think I wrote particularly insightfully or eloquently the morning after the election, but as a historical record of what I knew about the travesty of these election results, and what you probably also knew–what so many of us knew.

We will live through this, one day at a time, in the solidarity of commitment to goodness and kindness.

Rachel

The poet Alicia Jo Rabins quotes Jewish wisdom: “In a place where there is no good person, strive to be a good person.”

Yes.

We must live by our faith and love, now more than ever. We must resist.

I think of the Civil Rights leaders, Dr. King and all the named and unnamed who stood with him. People who fought for justice and love because: What choice did they have?

I think of Camus, the French Resistance as the Nazis occupied France. The dangerous, brave actions the Resistance took. And yes, the beauty of what they did. What choice did they have? That was the Existentialist question. They chose truth, and true freedom. They fought.

By an accident of history, I have never had to make that choice. I have never, under threat of brute oppression, hardship, and danger, had to fight for goodness and justice and love.

Now by an accident of history, I must choose. All of us must choose.

We need each other. Our hope is in each other. All petty differences drop away. The strength of our bonding beliefs in love, kindness, and interconnection astonishes us.

There is beauty in this.

We must live in that beauty, no matter what horrors we will now see.