Why This Frustrated Liberal is Still Voting
In June of 2015 I traveled to Europe on a short tour with a choir I used to perform with. It was a life changing trip. We participated in a large choral festival, which concluded with a performance where I got to sing a solo line during one song at the Vatican. At the conclusion of the festival we set off to tour a few towns through Tuscany. We were in the town of Montecatini on the night of June 26th, when the news came through that the Supreme Court had made their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. Marriage Equality was now the law of the land.
It didn’t really hit me until a few weeks later, but I returned to my country with more rights than I’d had when I left. Perhaps because I was not in a relationship the stakes felt less tangible, I don’t know. But when that realization did barrel into me with the force of a metaphorical train I sat at my desk and cried; a silent outpouring of tears that contained all of the fear of the closeted kid I had been, all the certainty of the closeted teenager who just knew that he would never see federal recognition of gay marriage in his lifetime, and the joy of the adult who realized that change is possible in so many ways.
Fast forward sixteen months. It was November of 2016. I was playing viola in a concert with my local symphony the Saturday after the election. Our first group rehearsal was on election night. I drove the forty minutes to the rehearsal listening to NPR, thinking things would be fine. By the time I came out of the rehearsal and began my drive home things were much less fine. With each mile I drove it became more and more clear that it was not going the way I had hoped. When I got back into town I stopped for emotional support ice cream, which did not help at all, and continued to follow the coverage, hoping that what I was seeing wasn’t happening.
But it did happen.
Four days later was the performance. We had a dress rehearsal in the afternoon and the concert would happen that night. I spent the morning doing the errands and home things typical of a Saturday, and went out to grab some lunch about an hour before I had to go to rehearsal. As I ate I continued reading the book I had brought along, The True Secret of Writing by Natalie Goldberg. As I neared the end of my sandwich, I reached a point where Goldberg told the story of a former student who had died alone in a hospital, because her partner of decades was not allowed to be in the hospital room because their marriage was not recognized. They were lesbians, and therefore less than in the pre-Obergefell world.
As my heart broke for those women two thoughts hit me in rapid succession.
“I’m so glad that will never happen again.”
“But, it could. It could all go away now.”
I shattered. I broke completely, sobbing with the book still in my hand. I pulled myself together just enough to go to rehearsal, the sobs calming to slow tears as I made the short drive. I parked, gathered myself together and went into the concert hall. I took my place in the viola section and attempted to get myself into rehearsal mode.
It was impossible. I opened the folder and saw the Brahms Requiem staring back at me. The fact that the piece on this concert was a requiem would be mocked if it was suggested in a TV show writers room, but it was reality. As we began to play the beautiful setting of the mass designed to mourn, all of the thoughts and feelings about the events of the past week swirled and boiled inside me and my hastily glued façade crumbled, and the tears began to flow again. Through the entire piece I cried, the tears falling onto my viola as I played through the music. At one pause my stand partner leaned over and whispered “are you okay?”
“No,” I responded simply, not bothering to tell any of the lies social convention often dictates we tell when asked this question.
The concert happened. Life moved on. I became more engaged in the political process than I ever had before, because I had been woken up in the most jarring way. The complete shock to my system I experienced on that Saturday made me feel so incredibly powerless. The fear that consumed my body about the future of our country galvanized me to participate like I hadn’t before. I would do my best to do my part in maintaining democracy, or at least know why it was falling apart.
Now as I write this in the days leading up to the 2022 midterm elections that same fear threatens to paralyze me – or at the very least contribute to a future ulcer.
It isn’t lost on me that as a white, cisgender man, from a middle class background, I have a multitude of advantages that many people don’t, that I am much more insulated from the consequences of the political backslide our country has been fighting for the past few years. The argument could be made that I was so undone on that day because the only real threats to my rights are those as a gay man, and that was the first time they felt threatened, the first time I experienced even the thought of the possibility of something that big being taken from me. There are many people who would just see that as another tick on the adversity scoreboard, one that doesn’t even crack the top five problems they face day to day. I see that, and I want their fears alleviated too. I want to live in the country that so many people believe we do; one that is accepting and a melting pot and a place where anyone can succeed. I want that American Dream for all of us.
I want to hope, but that can be very hard some days. Now with the downfall of Roe v. Wade and Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion, which spells out rather blatantly that marriage equality is on the chopping block as well, my fears are more real than ever. It would be so easy to give in to the cynicism that nothing can change, to accept that I am just one person and can only do so much. But then I remember that those feelings are exactly what the people who want to roll back the rights of so many want us to think, and as tempting as it can be to give in, I am simply too spiteful a person to let those people win so easily.
It is hard to not feel frustrated at times like this. And the arguments for giving up are plentiful. “I’m only one person, what does my vote do?” Yes, but enough people thinking that can be the difference between winning and losing.
“We worked hard for all the last elections and put the Democrats in charge and it didn’t work because X Y and Z. We shouldn’t have to keep doing this.” You’re right, we did, and we shouldn’t. But we do. It is complicated and hard to nail down to a simple explanation, but we have to vote, and we have to vote for the people who want to help people, not the ones who want to help themselves.
Do I think the Democratic Party has all the answers or does everything right? Absolutely not. I have major issues with President Biden and the congressional leadership, but they are the party who will do the least amount of harm right now. And yes, that does lead naturally to another common argument; “we shouldn’t have to choose between the lesser of two evils.” I agree, we shouldn’t. But when you don’t, sometimes the greater evil wins.
Is the system perfect? No. I would argue that it isn’t even good in a lot of ways, for a lot of people. But the only way we can change it, is to chip away and put in people who are willing to try to change it for the better, not those who want to burn it all down just for the sake of doing so, or to preserve some notion of past ideals. Too many of the people I love will be harmed if the levers of power shift too far to the right.
That is why I am voting the way I am in these midterms; because there is too much at stake to not do so.