Snake Oil Statesman

This election is about you and me, the average American citizen. It is about what we’ve bought into. It is about recognizing the division created by lumping each other into subhuman categories and “hating” each other for our politics rather than trying to understand or respect each other.

Subjective experience naturally leads to difference of opinion, yet the imperative of civil discourse demands uncomfortable conversations to find common ground.

Instead we call names, assign blame, share rage and righteousness on social media, ignore friends and family until after the election, each fearful for our country. How can we heal or come together when our sitting President dissuades unity, shuns respect and scoffs at civil engagement? Never has a sitting U.S. President so openly encouraged citizens to hate their fellow countrymen or attacked an opposition party so personally inciting hate, death threats and kidnapping schemes for elected officials. Rarely has any person lied with such reckless abandon, each of the thousands of mistruths now a public statement preserved for posterity.

We can’t buy every tonic promising to solve our problems, but there is no better snake oil to soothe our American soul than hatred. Never before would we have chosen disrespect, despots, Russia or racism as a running mate over our fellow citizens, over the good of our country.

There is no limit to our country’s loss and his gain when Trump pits race, religion, sex, gender and even our own affiliations against us. Using the free press, to drive further division, creating enemies where they don’t exist, deflecting from those that do.

Our homework is to check our individual and collective parts in it. We must ask and honestly answer ourselves if any of this inexcusable behavior would be acceptable by a sitting Democratic President or if it should be tolerated by any person or party in the highest offices in our land. Ask yourself how you’d feel if Barack Obama had asked Russia to interfere or had used a Twitter account to call elected officials names, offend our allies and promote personal interests on his unsecured cell phone. Your candor is required.

No spoiler alert needed, a double standard is applied when someone as credible as Merrick Garland has no hearing eight months prior to an election and Amy Coney Barrett is rushed through a nomination process in eight days one week before an election. The hypocrisy of “winning at all costs” increases the chance of the next party in power employing the same, if not worse, tactics. Turnabout is fair play, and so the cycle goes. We are nothing more than children in a sandbox fighting over who loves this country best, with no judge impartial enough to decide and plenty of judgement in our citizenry.

So, here we are. We can’t agree that Black Lives Matter, can’t agree on the right to peaceful protest in the street or by taking a knee, and can’t agree that our bodies are ours to do with as we wish in our beds and in our doctor’s offices. If we can’t agree on our complicated history, what can we agree on? How can we learn and move forward?

Can we agree that all lying and cheating is wrong?

Because that is what we tell our children. It is what we admit when we ask forgiveness. Can we agree that a country founded by fleeing religious persecution should allow its citizens to celebrate their faith without fear of hate crimes? Can we agree we all pee yellow? Can we agree that not all people in a race or at a protest are bad or rioters? Do we know that a police officer can take off their uniform at the end of the day but that a person of color is born into theirs?

If we cannot agree, then what manner of crime are we alright with? Those that benefit us or our beliefs? If lying about sex or grabbing pussy is ok, and contraception is wrong what message are we sending?

Can we stand our own history to be told truthfully? Can we agree that the blood of Liberals and Conservatives both has been spent on battlefields and in our factories? Can we defend ourselves so staunchly yet expect that someone with the other view will not?

The country is hurting, it’s citizens afraid of and for each other. During this pandemic only taxpayer paid politicians have job security along with their lobbyists, all because we allow money and influence in politics. Our citizenry has been the frog in the lobby pot and we are boiling ourselves, slowly but surely.

There is no pass given to the average worker, the average citizen. No tax we don’t have to pay. No rule we aren’t made to follow. Only Donald Trump gets a pass. We won’t give special treatment to single moms or starving children, or victimized young Black men, let alone a pass to each other. Yet he can mess up time and again, he can lie tens of thousands of times. This snake oil statesman has poured hatred into the heart of this country and we have chosen to buy his vile.