“All My Hopes”

“All My Hopes”

 

In the motion picture Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Lt. Uhura says, “All my hopes” as Kirk, McCoy and Sulu head off to face an enormous challenge.

 

I feel that way today…

 

Today, November 3rd, is Election Day in the Divided States of America. Those civic-minded patriots who haven’t already voted will finally be casting their ballots today.

 

And although it’s looking GOOD for the Good Guys (or for the Lesser of Two Evils, as progressive curmudgeons claim), there are no guarantees that the final outcome will turn out the way we expect or want it.

 

The 2016 election was clear enough proof of that. I still have a t-shirt that proclaims, “A woman’s place is in the White House.”(with no HRC logo attached, fortunately). I look forward to wearing it with pride and delight when Kamala Harris becomes the first woman president. (Joe Biden has indicated that he will serve a single term as President.)

 

So we gather “all our hopes” and we wait… or we make a final flurry of phone calls to other states sitting on the cusp of coming into our column in a last ditch effort to make this election not just a squeak-by win for DEMs, but a true blue tsunami that leaves zero doubt that the diseased mind and administration of Donald J. Trump was an abominable, atrocious, antithetical anomaly and NOT who we are as a nation.

 

I truly believe that, which is why I’m anticipating not just a Biden-Harris win but a Blue Tsunami across the board (in the House, Senate and in states that haven’t gone blue in decades).

 

Because Trump has been a bridge waaaaaaayyyyyyy too far.

 

He has disgraced us as a nation even as he has set us at each other’s throats.

 

He delights in cruelty and in causing discomfort.

 

He applauds mean-spirited and dangerous interactions when they’re engendered by “his” people.

 

His policies make citizens both unequal and unsafe.

 

Far right evangelicals say he was sent by God.

 

So were the ten plagues of Egypt (shorthand here, for each of them): blood, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and finally the death of the firstborn!

 

If God had anything to do with helping Trump land his present position (I have no dog in this fight, I’m just taking their claim to its logical conclusion), it was to serve as a stark warning: this is the kind of “King” (tyrant) you elect (of your own free will) when you forget what you were taught about civilized intercourse and about taking care of “the least of these” (and the alien and the stranger) among you.

 

Trump is the polar opposite of what a benevolent steward should be. You know the litany of demerits in his column, so I won’t list them here, because I want to keep this post positive and helpful. I’m not into bashing the man or his minions. I’m into removing them from crucial positions of power because they have done us zero favors as a self-proclaimed “civilization” while they’ve occupied them.

 

So I pour all my hopes into my fellow citizens whose votes will decide (I hope decisively) what kind of nation and world we want to inherit and inhabit on January 20, 2021.

 

I trust, given the unprecedented voter turnout this time, that we’re about to turn this big ship around and head for saner ports.

 

We deserve better than this. Most citizens recognize this. The ones who don’t have gone too far around the bend to call back now–and I fear they’re headed for a cliff they didn’t anticipate.