Here Again... Another Election & One Woman’s Dread

The 2018 election drove me to write and publish my first article on Medium. I wrote again before the 2020 election, though by then sharing my thoughts and words had become a habit. We are now three weeks out from the 2022 election, and last night, as I flirted with sleep, whispers swirled around me.

Here we are… again.

Yet this time feels wholly different to me. The feeling of dread that’s eaten at me for seven years has become a dead weight. Mornings I wake with an anchor tangled around my body, lacking the intestinal fortitude to get out of bed and face the countdown to November 8th.

So much has happened since I first felt the dread. Back then it felt big, but vague — a fear of something to come, something catastrophic, but undefined. I was teaching at Bastyr University, burned out, trying hard to reach my students, keep up with new research, meet administrative demands, and stay sane.

By 2017, I opted in favor of sanity; I quit my job, moved in with my mom, and took a self-financed sabbatical. It took a year to recover from burnout and regain my health. When I stuck my head out to rejoin society, I was smack in the middle of a train wreck. During the year I’d been in hiding, my country had devolved.

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There have always been haters, misogynists, xenophobes, and racists, but the hatred, anger, and ugliness being slung against “othered” peoples felt different in 2018. It felt bigger, meaner, and graver. Worse, much of it came from government officials… the same government whose constitution appears to pledge “justice and liberty for all.”

I knew in my bones this was part of my dread. So, with the midterm elections looming, I needed to say what I saw. I wrote about the rising levels of hate and discovered I could publish my words on Medium. It didn’t go viral; I got almost no response. But at least I’d put words out into the universe.

It wasn’t enough, but democracy prevailed anyway.

Almost immediately after, the 2020 presidential election cycle began. It came along with a pandemic, increasing attacks against all people not white, Christian, heterosexual, cis-gendered, and not in-favor of the prevailing systems designed to maintain the status quo.

Again, I had to write. Again, it wasn’t enough, but at least we elected a new president.

And now the 2022 midterms have begun. People have already cast votes, and things don’t look promising. Two nights ago, I heard the results of an NYT/Siena poll, and it lit a bulb for me. Of registered voters, 71% believe democracy is at stake, but only 7% see this as the most important problem facing Americans as we step into the voting booth.

Wait. What?

Our entire way of life is on the ballot, but we don’t think our potential demise is a big enough issue to vote on? Talk about justification for casting a single-issue vote!

That 64% gap between knowing our way of life is in jeopardy and choosing to vote based upon that knowledge is overwhelming evidence that America is, in fact, stupid. While it isn’t the first time I have observed our stupidity in stark relief, it has clarified that sense of doom I’ve had festering in my gut the past seven years….

I am part of a pathetically apathetic population that has so removed itself from reality it doesn’t care about its own existence. Oh, so willingly we’ve allowed ourselves to be led down the path of least resistance… give us easy, not effort, more technology, not critical thinking or compassion, more shiny objects, not contemplation of our purpose.

This mind-numbing path of consumption keeps us quiet and compliant… drugs, alcohol, TV, social media, video games, lots and lots of toys, and stuff and more stuff… anything that will blind us to the reality of our unsatisfying lives.

This is not OK. It is not tenable; it cannot hold.

The crux of my dreaded doom is that this country will cease to exist as I know it. What will replace it?

Chaos, civil war, fascism, dictatorship, the loss of individual freedoms…?

I don’t know.

But I know that part of that doom swelling inside me is not about what will happen next. It’s about accepting that the average American is NOT who I hoped and prayed they were. The truth is: we were never what we purported to be — a land of freedom, justice, liberty for ALL.

There have been times we’ve rallied toward that goal, but too few, and with too little to show for it. Too many have never had a chance to lift their heads above the water. I see now just how many Americans define ALL as a group of people who look, think, and act like them.

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I am disoriented. The “collective” I thought I was part of does not aspire to the same values I cherish. Compassion seems dead, or to have fled, along with critical thinking, and truth, honesty, and soul. And within this cloud of confusion, I honor a new truth…

I am more afraid of where we’re at than where we’re going.

I don’t want things to stay the same. They need to change. But we’ve been trying to fix this broken system for 200-plus years with little success.

Maybe the only answer is demolition.

We need a fresh start, but who is “we” and where do we begin?

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I will still vote on November 8th. I will vote in favor of more compassion and fewer lies, more integrity and less intimidation, more charity and less ignorance, more diversity and sovereignty and personal freedom, less propaganda and prejudice and hate, more unity, collaboration, and truth, less tyranny, othering, and disenfranchisement.

This post is not enough. I know that. But it’s all I have to give right now.