Heads They Win. Tails We Lose.
In a nutshell, the title above is my feeling about the presidential race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. No matter the outcome, we will not win as a nation, as a democracy. If he loses, he and his followers will never accept the outcome, and might respond with violence. If she loses, Trump’s stated intentions to destroy his “enemies,” dismantle the “deep state,” and turn both the courts and the military against U.S. citizens, are terrifying. The grifting and incompetence that characterize anything that Trump touches, embraces, endorses, hires, etc., might actually be worse.
I know that, and have felt weirdly calm and mostly detached from this whole election thing. Why? Because I don’t feel that the election will resolve the illnesses that plague us as a nation, namely, the idiocy on left and right that leaves those of us who care about the quaint idea of a social compact, and the necessity of collaborating to solve problems, feeling homeless and deeply frustrated. The idea of public service has been turned into a clown circus for imbeciles and grifters, and the too-few good people who step up and forward in the face of all of this find themselves facing death threats, character assassination, and the bill for 24 hour security for themselves and their loved ones. Good people shrink from public service, letting the worst among us rise to prominence in the vacuum that is left.
And yet, my equanimity remains. Why? I think it’s because I have fully internalized that the only thing I control in this nation, in this world, in this life, is what I do or say. I have absolutely no control over how what I do or say is received. None. Taking that to heart and truly internalizing it, has been utterly liberating. Untethered from any ideology or political party, I am fully committed only to one thing: being myself. In every setting and circumstance.
This means that all of my choices are aligned with my values, that I don’t answer to any group, that I don’t subscribe to beliefs that I haven’t fully interrogated — or interrogated enough to feel confident in adopting — so what I believe and who I am are fully in synch. That is a magical and frankly miraculous way to go through a world in which people take on and shed beliefs like they change their underwear. Because so much behavior these days is performance-oriented, what people actually believe is damn hard to discern, or trust. Since everything seems to be for sale, why believe anything that doesn’t further one’s transactional goals of achieving, getting, gaining, etc? So if believing x doesn’t get you to your goal of y, then believe something else that will. If you are hardcore opposed to abortion, but land in a gerrymandered district that is pro-choice, just disavow your past beliefs, or claim they only related to abortions that are performed in the ninth month of pregnancy. In other words, create a convenient straw man you can knock down, so you can convince voters you’ve always been one of them. Can’t gain followers on TikTok by communicating A? What the heck, communicate Z instead. Just wrap it in some sellable transformation language and convince all those people you don’t know — and who don’t know you — that you are exactly who they want and need you to be. Followed by the payoff of more followers and sponsors, true beliefs be damned.
Sounds cynical? Well, of course. We live in a time of marketing supremacy, and whatever furthers that singular agenda is by definition a worthy goal. Success justifies its methods, no matter how dishonest those methods might be. Everything is transactional, instrumental. Doing something simply because it’s the right and dare I say ethical thing to do, is a sucker’s bargain. But is it?
The thing about falsehood is that it’s a heavy load to carry. Once embroiled in lies, who you were when you actually told the truth gets lost, perhaps never to be found again. Now for some folks, that’s not really a sacrifice, because the point of being lies in bending. Whichever way the wind, politics, money, personal security, fame, etc. demand. For all the tea in China, for all the glitter of Hollywood, and for all the power of certain corridors, I would not want to be that person. But clearly, many do.
Following the masses into whatever cave of complicity and cooperation their masters demand never has been — and dare I say never will be — for me. Not because I’m better or smarter. But because I was raised to think, to wrestle, to know a world of complexity, cruelty, confusion. But also a world of kindness, wisdom, and generosity. And once you understand that the world is made up of such opposing forces, you know that your entire existence is really about one thing, and one thing only: the choices you make. That is a stunning and liberating revelation. It frees one to design a life that is values-based, and to check choices against values, and values against choices and to seek out — always — the best alignment possible.
Life will certainly throw curveballs, and decisions based even on values held true and deeply can be complicated, messy, and wildly, sometimes devastatingly, imperfect. But the intentionality behind those decisions still means better decisions than would be found in the self-serving framework of fame/money/attention-seeking. Values by their nature are held intimately, but require an outward manifestation, unless one chooses to remove oneself from the human world, and retreat to an unnatural isolation.
So in this moment of grave anxiety, I find myself feeling preternaturally calm. Because at the end of the day, I will be the same person I was before election day, as I will be after election day. And that steadiness, that deeply rooted commitment to the values I’ve cultivated, embraced, and tried my best to live by, is perhaps greater security in this perilous moment than the strongest port in the worst of storms.
