On the Eve, Undecided

Yesterday I drove from Emmaus to Allentown on the 309 North. The 309 is every so often met by bridges that span over the road, and normally you don’t take much notice of these bridges, but yesterday was different. Yesterday, you spotted one of the bridges from a long way off, because someone had written a large sign on a bedsheet and stretched it out over the side.

Vote Trump.

That’s what it said, period included. The bedsheet was surrounded by official Trump/Pence campaign posters, and then beside all of this stood a tiny old woman. She had poofy hair and a poofier jacket, she wore classic too-big old-lady sunglasses, and she sported a positively dazzling smile. As the cars passed below her on the 309, she smiled and waved, big sweeping overhead waves. You couldn’t miss her. She was all alone on, just her and her homemade sign and her parked navy blue minivan idle at the curb.

That woman was the happiest person I saw all weekend. Her smile was wider than the greeters at church and more genuine than the cashiers at the supermarket. She was exuberant and excited and had a little shrug to her like Hey, just doing my part. She seemed the type to spoil her grandkids and put her pennies in the donation tin at the gas station and give 110-percent at her water aerobics class. Just a sweet old lady. Not here to argue. Just here to help.

I wonder how many people drove by and called her a stupid old bitch.

***

There are many assumptions to be made about the smiling old woman on the bridge. You might assume she doesn’t trust black people. You might assume she’s a conspiracy theorist. You might assume she hates Muslims and thinks Obama is ‘one of them.’ You might assume she’s uninformed or, to be more blunt, unintelligent. As the image of the old lady smiling and waving stuck in my mind, I mulled all these theories at one point or another. I suppose they’re each possible, but that doesn’t make me feel any less guilty about considering them.

It’s an obvious point but it deserves to be made explicit: The 2016 presidential election has damaged the way we see each other on a person-to-person level. In response to that, we can be cute and talk about silent majorities and drop lines like, “Oh, but that’s only a small percentage of their supporters,” but that’s dodgy. The reality is if you like Trump, you probably feel a very certain way about Hillary supporters, and that means you feel a very certain way about specific, individual Hillary supporters you know: Where’s their sense of justice? How could they be so ignorant to her corruption? Why are they so arrogant? Vice versa is true for those voting for Hillary on Trump supporters: Where’s their sense of morality? How could they be so tolerant of his bigotry and sexism? Why are they so jello-spined?

The attacks are easy to recite because, well, they’re everywhere. Our Facebook walls and Twitter feeds have become billboards for personal political credos, and while that can certainly be a good thing—Anyone else register to vote and/or find their local polling station on Facebook?—it feels like we all know a little too much about our friends now. We know who shared the “If You Vote For Trump, Then Fuck You” column from GQ. We know who re-posted Trump’s threat to imprison Clinton (and then who went off on the objectors in the comment section). We know who’s said, in exacting, carefully considered terms, that they straight-up don’t respect anyone who supports Trump, and we know who straight-up said the reverse. We know what our friends think and what our family members think and we know what the friends of our family members think, and by proxy, it seems we know who likes us, who hates us, and who doesn’t bother enough to care about us either way.

Of course, these swords have another edge. In taking such blood-soaked stands for our beliefs, we are inviting others to stereotype us based on those beliefs. Want to come out in support for Hillary? Awesome. Be proud of that. Just know that in 2016 it means a lot of people are going to think you’re foolish and a rebel against the American justice system. Want to come out in support of Trump? By all means. Just know that in 2016 it means people are going to think you’re a racist and a dimwit. Have you noticed by now? This essay has been careful so far to be as neutral as possible. It’s because coming down one way or the other means that you’re likely to put me in a box and read this with preconceptions on my motivations for writing this. That’s the last thing I want. It’s the last thing any of us want, really.

A story: Some weeks ago, I was talking in a group text with some college buddies about the election. One of my closest friends, who I’ve known as a staunch liberal since Day One, referred to GOP voters as easily-manipulated “Republican sheep.” I grew up in a red state—Arizona is about as hardcore Republican as it can be—and thus that label was thrust upon many of my childhood friends, many of my family members, and many people with opinions I trust and respect. The ‘favorites’ section of my contacts has a lot of “republican sheep” in it. When I confessed this to my friend, he tried to walk the comment back, but it’s still out there, just a little. Our friendship is still strong and permanent, but the guy compared a lot of important people in my life to dim-witted farm animals. That sucks, man, but that’s been the American political dialogue in microcosm this year. That and more crude synonyms for ‘vagina’ than I’ve ever been comfortable with.

There must be something better. When we elect a president, we are deciding on a trajectory for the United States of America. Our leaders often don’t become the change they promise, but they do orient the nation on a pathway that can lead us toward that change, whatever form it takes. Right now, based on what we see on our phones and on television, America is on a trajectory marked with fracture, disruption, division, and disgust. We’ve been so eager to say that the result of November 8 will decide what kind of country we are. That’s crap. We’ve already decided, ourselves, alone, what kind of country we are. We’re a country that rips off smug subtweets and leaves self-righteous comments on Facebook. We’re acting like there’s a savior in this election; there isn’t. Unity doesn’t start the moment Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton enters the White House. It starts the moment our thumbs hover over the Send button.

I think back to that woman on the bridge over the 309 North. I imagine her waking up extra early Saturday morning. She bustles over to the linen closet and pulls down the old sheet and shakes off all the dust. She digs around in her kitchen drawer and finds her Sharpie and kneels right there on the tile and writes the big block letters. She puts on her poofy red jacket—nice and bipartisan—and zips it up all the way to her chin. She heads out to the bridge and stands and waves and smiles at every single car that drives by. I wonder why she did it. I wonder why she’s voting for Trump. I wonder why she was so happy. I have a guess.

There was a special sort of hope in that tiny old woman. Hope for a better country than the one she lived in now. It’s so admirable. Of course, you might disagree with the manifestation of her hope, but put that aside for a moment, because there’s a vision at work here for an America where different ideas can coexist, where unity can be characterized by diversity, and where people can express their dreams for the United States without fear of hostility. That tiny old woman had such a peace, such a security to her, that watching those big overhead waves almost put you in a place where voters in 2016 weren’t unfairly categorized based on their candidate or their party. No deplorables or nasty women or third-party cowards. Just Americans celebrating the privilege to participate in our monumental, momentous republic. It’s a hopeful thought, and that can be a good thing, but it also feels far away. Maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Obama’s two election cycles were empowering and exciting, whether you voted for the president or not. People weren’t voting to prevent a candidate or protest a candidate; they were voting because they felt compelled by the capacity to make a difference. That feeling of self-made change is essential and intrinsic to being an American, but we’re losing our grip on it. No matter what happens on Tuesday, we must orient our eyes on a trajectory of restoration and progress. We must rediscover compromise and compassion and healthy, constructive debate. Once decided, we must own the outcome, no matter our vote, and find a trajectory toward unity, empathy, and understanding.

Vote tomorrow. Vote with pride and passion, conscious and conviction. Vote with the desire to learn from those who disagree with you, and vote with the ability to hope for a better nation than the one we have now. To be undecided is to have potential, but to be decided is to wield power. Power can make us selfish, and we often forget that true significance is found when power is used to embolden others. To be decided is to have a unique privilege. We would all be foolish, (and ignorant, and stupid) to waste it.