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VOTE as if Your Life Depended on it
In ancient Europe when the Celtic
religion held
sway, the end of October, beginning of November by our
calendar, was known as
Samhain (sah'-win) marking the turning of the year when the
veils between the
worlds of the living and the dead were thin and permeable.
Because the spirits
of our dead are not always benevolent, the people accustomed
to wear frightening
masks then to hide their identities and protect themselves
scaring away
the evil spirits.
This custom has come down to us in
neutered form as
Halloween when we like to dress-up and wear scary masks and
delight in
pretended horror escorting our masked children door-to-door
begging for sweets.
But this Halloween season, I admit
to you, my terror
is very real. The politics of the country have torn away the
thin veils of
pretense to expose the ugly evil spirits of racism, hatred of
women,
homophobia, fear of the other, greed that deeply haunt the
soul of the culture
like a chronic infection direly threatening the body politic.
We must admit that both viable
candidates for the
presidency are what the empire has permitted (notwithstanding
that
what democracy survives in it allowed us to carry to the very
threshold of the
Democratic Party nomination Sen. Bernie Sanders who was our
voice for justice,
peace, compassion, concern for the Earth and life itself.) As
such, each in
their own way, represent the interests of the plutocratic,
capitalistic,
corporate-run empire and that is as things stand.
Having said this, the Republican
candidate Donald J.
Trump is a hundred fold more terrifying than the Democratic
candidate Hillary
R. Clinton. Clinton as First Lady, as Senator, as Secretary of
State has shown
herself to be "centrist" (read capitalistic neo-liberal) in
support
of the U. S. policy of perpetual war to preserve its hegemony
and protect the
interests of the corporations and the moneyed one-percent. On
the other hand,
she has supported civil rights, the causes of women, children,
and the GLBT
community. Furthermore, being a seasoned politician and highly
intelligent, she
is also capable of modifying her positions under the
continuing pressure of us
who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders. Since her nomination, she
has based her
campaign firmly on the planks that we Sanders supporters
hammered on the
Democratic Party platform. There is little reason to believe
that she will
abandon these if she is elected — we must be ready to demand
that she be
committed to her words.
Mr. Donald Trump, to put it
bluntly, is a racist,
woman-hating, homophobic sociopath driven by greed and a
narcissistic
megalomania that makes him arrogant, violent, impulsive,
temperamental and is
totally ignorant of politics much less foreign affairs. To
imagine such a one
as head of the most powerful empire in the world, in charge of
the mightiest
nuclear arsenal on Earth, terrifies not only many of us but
the entire world.
Terrifying is that he gives voice to and legitimizes the fear,
the hatred, the
racism, the misogyny, the homophobia, the violence that Nazi
Germany of the
last century came to typify.
Thus the root of my terror — and it
is only
intensified by the voices of a goodly number of the
disillusioned that I hear,
self-destructive voices of nihilism that say that they will
vote for Trump
because "he is at least up-front in his racism" or insist that
they
will vote for Jill Stein of the Green Party (without the
political structure or
the base to make it viable) or write-in Bernie Sanders
(against Bernie Sanders'
own advice) or not vote at all — all choices that ultimately
would result in
votes for Trump.
Neither Clinton nor Trump are the
choices that I
would wish, but let us not delude ourselves that they are no
different from
each other. Clinton recognizes the threat of climate change;
Trump denies that
it even exists. Trump and the Republicans would be immeasurably
more disastrous
than Clinton and the Democrats. With Clinton and the Democrats
there is at
least a chance for change in favor of the Earth and life, of
justice. The race
is terrifyingly close; we must do all we can to elect Hillary
Clinton as the
better, immeasurably better, of the two. We must not chance
anything else.
Indeed the veils between worlds
grow thin this
season and no mask will protect us from the terror to which
our history has
brought us. We have no choice but to gird ourselves with our
resolve, be the
healers that the times call for, fortify ourselves with our
love and our joy,
VOTE — and, once our vote decides, continue our struggle for
justice and peace
and the well-being of the Earth and the life she bears.
Rafael
Jesús González
Berkeley,
California
Two
excellent pertinent articles by Clarence
B. Jones,
friend and advisor to Dr. Martin Luther king Jr., and my
good friend Jonathan
D. Greenberg, Scholars in Residence, Daniel Martin Gould
Center for Conflict
Resolution, Stanford Law School:
Teachers and Mentors: Who made Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton who they are today?
and
If Dr. King Were Alive Today
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