Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Every single day there is a new, terrifying, preventable tragedy fomented by a president and an administration that uses hate and entitlement as political expedience. If you remain disillusioned or apathetic in this climate, you are complicit. You think your disillusionment is more important than the very real dangers marginalized people in this country live with.

Don’t delude yourself about this. Don’t shroud your political stance in disaffected righteousness. Open your eyes and see the direct line from the people in power to their emboldened acolytes. It is cynical to believe that when we vote we are making a choice between the  lesser of two evils. We are dealing with a presidency fueled by hate, greed and indifference. We are dealing with a press corps that can sometimes make it seem as though there are two sides to bigotry. Republican politicians share racist memes that spread false propaganda and crow “fake news” when reality interferes with their ambitions. Progressive candidates are not the lesser of two evils here; they are not anywhere on the spectrum of evil we are currently witnessing.’ (New York Times column)

Roxane Gay is one writer I always pay attention to, so this pre-midterm column caught my eye last week when it was published. I was also taken by this piece by the always wonderful Rebecca Solnit, and another article from the Guardian that spells out exactly why the US fails to be a participatory democracy in so many ways.

In some ways it feels that everyone has been holding their breaths for months, waiting to see the outcome of today’s vote. I regret not being able to vote, as a non-citizen, and that I don’t have so much money to donate to the causes I support; I can only hope that a sense of the common good comes to prevail again.