Politics | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Politics

Django, Djesus, and PreDjudice

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

Last night was an accidental movie night. By this, I mean that Dan brought in his laptop and tablet and an impressive tangle of cables and I brought in my ironing board and iron and an impressive pile of shirts, and we sat down on the sofa to sip a drink before getting on with our evening’s work and forgot to get up until three hours later when the closing credits of Django Unchained rolled on.

Now, I’m a sucker for a good Tarantino film (our last accidental movie night can be blamed on Grindhouse being aired in English on Italian TV; how were we supposed to pass up that bit of magic, I ask?), and Django was every bit the ride from subtly intriguing to laughably outrageous that we expected. Still, I sat heavily on the sofa cushions when it was over, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of me.

It’s the subject of slavery, see. I’ve read plenty of books and seen even more films about it, but at a certain point, I just can’t maintain my protective distance any more. The tragedy of humans buying and selling other humans, stripping them of rights, and abusing them as they would never mistreat their in-animate property seeps into my lungs and steals the breath right out of them. If this were an isolated blot on the timetables of history, I could look at it more objectively, but the fact is that we humans, when given the power and the cultural approval to do so, willingly abandon our humanity.

I was born and raised in one of the original Confederate states, and while pushback against the Civil Rights Movement had pretty much dissipated by the time I came along, racism was—is—still alive and well in the South. Today’s racism doesn’t have the theatrical stamp of white hoods or riot gear; rather, it’s a stream of superiority running so silently through the community’s perspective that we don’t even realize it’s there. We don’t identify what’s really going on when we describe the black family across the street as “uppity” for driving a shiny SUV and the black family two doors down as “freeloaders” for relying on Medicaid. We don’t realize how frequently we use race to explain why something is distasteful to us—“Oh, you know, Mexicans and yard care…”—or how our assumptions about others’ income, education, personality, and reliability are fueled by prejudice.

I realize that this is a deep, complex issue that can’t just be laid out and then neatly wrapped up by a middle-class white girl with a blog. I have no love for debate and no desire to shame the people I grew up with over a bigger cultural issue. That said, one glaring realization stands out to me in the emotional aftermath of Accidental Django Night: The reason that traditional slavery no longer exists in the United States is not that we’re a more enlightened species now; it’s that brave people over the last two centuries fought and sacrificed and took unpopular stands and often risked everything to get one human right after another passed into law.

Even worse, we’re still not there, still not to the place where all people are granted equality regardless of skin color or income level or sexual orientation or religious conviction. Straight, wealthy white Christians (of which I am one, I know) still control almost all legal and educational decisions for the country. Human traffickers still sell and trade lives within American borders. Hate is still harnessed everywhere from courtrooms to first-grade classrooms, and it makes me wish sometimes that I could just shrug off this broken human condition like an ill-fitting coat. I don’t want this bloodline of oppression and exploitation any longer.

In the end, though, this is a fundamental part of my faith. I have problems with many, many tenets of mainstream Christianity, but the concept of depravity is not hard for me to swallow. It’s only too obvious throughout the pages of history books and newspapers that humans, left to their own devices, turn into monsters. It is also obvious to me that without a higher power inspiring and nudging us along, we have little reason to fight our shitty inclinations. While I don’t believe that this higher power is limited to the straight, wealthy, white Christian God often portrayed by pastors of the same demographic, I do believe in a God who helps us rise above our natures. We supply the self-awareness and humility, [s]he supplies the soul-therapy.

Jesus talked extensively about the realm of heaven here on earth, heaven’s subjects administering healing and kindness and justice and grace, and I love that idea of operating within humanity as a citizen of something beyond. The flawed thinking behind travesties like the Crusades and Westboro Baptist Church is that our mission as Jesus-followers is to overcome others when in truth, our mission is to overcome ourselves—to ascend beyond our cruel and self-preserving instincts into the upside-down beauty of regarding each other as more important.

Granted, this mission more closely resembles salmon flopping up waterfalls than it does the calm spiritual levitation that last sentence might have implied. It’s exhausting, frustrating, and teeth-grittingly hard work not being an asshole (can I get an amen?), and considering how assholery begets assholery, there’s plenty of two-waterfalls-forward, one-waterfall-back action among those of us who interact with other humans. Still, overcoming my biological dark side is worth the manic fish routine to me. I’m willing to continue trying, continue aspiring to a perspective based on love because I believe with all my heart that it can change the world.

It might not be the reaction Tarantino was going for, but there you have it.

17Dec

Our Right to Thumbs

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 2 Comments

As soon as I opened Facebook this morning, the site recommended two pages for me based on my friends’ likes:

Guns and Shooting.

Guns and Shooting, and my friends’ names alongside pixelated thumbs of approval. Guns and Shooting, and a Facebook feed bristling in defense of assault rifles. Guns and Shooting, and quotes from religious figures implying that God allowed the tragedy as an act of revenge on a school system that no longer sponsors him. Guns and Shooting, and the caps-locked screams of loved ones fighting for their unhindered right to weapons of destruction.

As a culture (and I speak in sweeping generalities here), we Americans have accepted that violence can only be counteracted with more violence. We see war as 100% necessary and place our hope in the Jack Bauers of the nation. We think that the only way to defend ourselves from guns is to put more guns into circulation. We claim that if only the Sandy Hook teachers had been packing heat, Friday’s tragedy would have been averted. We believe in our hearts that we will have to use deadly force against another human being at some point in our lives, so it’s best to be prepared. We state that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but we forget to count ourselves among the potential killers because we’re on the good guy team.

We respond to the massacre of twenty young children by defending the weapons that killed them.

As a child, I had fun shooting targets and small animals, and the cold cruelty of a machine made to destroy never entered my mind. Guns were just something every family kept in the coat closet. Even at university, when a classmate was expelled for stockpiling weapons and ammunition in his dorm room, I absorbed friends’ indignation on his behalf. “He would never use them to hurt anyone!” we all said. And on this point, we were probably right. My classmate enjoyed hunting, and where could he store his gear if not in his dorm room?

However, our university had rules in place to reduce the risk of mass murders, so they expelled the student who, regardless of motives, had stocked up on devices specifically designed to kill. And this is what the gun debate comes down to for me—risk reduction. No, there is no amount of legislation that will prevent psychopaths or terrorists from enacting violence. Yes, there will always be a healthy black market for weapons of destruction. Yes, people should have the right to defend themselves, especially on their own property. No, peace is never guaranteed.

But can we just step back for a moment from the mentality that violence is our birthright? Can we stop letting fear dictate our morals? Can we have the courage to take a fraction of the risk off the shoulders of innocent schoolchildren and hold it ourselves, in their stead? Rather than amending our lifestyles and outlooks and job descriptions to include more violence, can we consider amending the availability of its instruments?

I am not arguing to abolish gun ownership altogether, though my husband and I believe that as followers of Jesus, we need to take his teachings on nonviolence to heart. However, we need to talk and talk hard about why civilians are allowed to own assault machinery, why it’s easier to get bullets than to get Sudafed, and why the fiercest fight in the aftermath of Newtown is waged on behalf of the murder weapons.

We need to consider what we are saying about human life with our thumbs-up.

~~~

Further reading:

On Violence by D.L. Mayfield, who shares her thoughts on how to do radical pacifism

Breaking News, Bearing Arms by Rebecca Woolf, whose husband is with her today because of his stance on nonviolence

Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? by Nicholas Kristof, who shows that we’re more worried about regulating ladders than about regulating firearms

Speed Kills by William Saletan, who holds Friday’s tragedy up against school attacks outside the U.S.

God Angrily Clarifies ‘Don’t Kill’ Rule by The Onion, who brilliantly, profanely, and heartbreakingly speaks the obvious

Love Your Enemies by Jesus, who lived it

Feel free to add your own suggested links in the comments!

5Oct

Purple

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 9 Comments

She’s one of the most likeable women you’d ever meet—sweet, positive, and so down-to-earth that you forget to be intimidated by her ridiculous beauty. She gave birth to her first child while her husband was deployed overseas, and she continues to raise their babies with enthusiasm while maintaining a fairytale marriage and caring, deeply, for her friends and extended family. I haven’t seen her in several years, but we keep up[ish] through Facebook, and I’d love to have a coffee with her (or run a marathon, which is more her style and might have something to do with the ridiculous beauty factor).

That is, I’d love to have a coffee with her if I could be certain that politics would never enter the conversation. Regularly since the 2008 election, she’s been posting hate-laced statuses about our current American president, and not just pointing out policies she doesn’t agree with, but defaming his character, blaming him for everything she sees wrong in the world, claiming that his presidency is literally making her sick, and viciously insulting anyone who wishes him well. And see, that anyone happens to include me.

She’s not the only one either, and according to my Facebook home page, some of my friends—all good people who would never say the following to my face—indirectly call me an ignorant commie, heretical, devoid of common sense, a jaw-flapping liberal, anti-American, a fool. Keep in mind that this is before the election; votes have yet to be cast, and the vitriol loading down friend feeds across the world is directed solely toward… well, belief.

I honestly don’t know how to shrug off the weight of that. I haven’t voted yet—I haven’t even decided which candidate will get my vote—but I know that my thought processes about government and standard of living are enough in themselves to attract poison-tipped backlashes, even if I never try to propagate those thoughts. Just the fact that they’re different from some others’ is enough. I want so badly to believe that we as a humanity have matured, that the people of today would never put Galileo on trial for claiming that our planet revolved around the sun, that we would never imprison Dostoevsky for discussing Western philosophy with his friends or condemn Socrates for encouraging free thought in his students or launch inquisitions to force orthodoxy on the populace… but I don’t know if it’s that we’re more mature now or if we simply have less power to turn hateful opinions into hateful actions.

I’d planned to keep my blog a politics-free zone this election season, to stay far out of the various lines of fire and [fingers crossed] avoid any combative holiday dinners. I’m still hurting from some of the things said about me, my husband, and even our sweet little girls back in 2008, and I don’t want to open up my beliefs again to that kind of derision. On the other hand, I know deep down that it’s not enough to step back and passively disapprove. I can’t hope to see change by refusing to engage any more than I could by dashing off snide critiques of the presidential debate, and I don’t want the better part of my identity, the part that stands for rather than against, to atrophy simply because I’m afraid of criticism.

So here, friends, is what makes my heart beat stronger in this election season, what I believe in enough to brave the often-toxic political climate and speak up:

– Respectful, curiosity-fueled discussions meant to better understand another’s way of thinking rather than bash that thinking as wrong or stupid. I know the Presidential Debate isn’t likely to become the Presidential Win-Win Relational Learning Hour anytime soon, but interviewing a friend with a different outlook could be a great start. (Rachel Held Evan’s “Ask a…” series is a fantastic example.)

– Open-mindedness and sincere consideration of all sides. Our political affiliations are so often determined by our family backgrounds rather than our core values, and even though honest reflection will probably lead us right back to our original positions, we can hopefully come back with more personal conviction, a deeper regard for those who arrive at other conclusions, and a sense that our nation is not red and blue so much as it is purple.

– Love across party lines—when we put down the pitchforks and snarky e-cards and choose to see people’s worth apart from their political leanings. Dan is not one microspeck less the man I love because we sometimes vote differently, and despite our many conversations about politics through the years, he has yet to realize he’s married to an anti-American commie heretic. I’ve lost out on so much goodness in the past by letting political fervor cloud my view of the people in my life, and I can personally attest that there is no victory in making a point at the expense of relationships.

– Grace toward those who make us angry, either by their differing beliefs or through their harsh words. This is the hardest one for me, but I recognize that my adorable military-wife friend needs me to take her cruel words with perspective and forgiveness just as much as I need her to take my support of the president with understanding and respect. This grace thing, it goes both ways.

You know, I was thisclose to bowing out of Facebook this morning. I had the status box already filled in with a quippy explanation of how all the political posts were driving me away, but as my finger hovered over the “Post” button, I caught a glimpse of my words as others would see them—as a conversation-ender, a slammed door. I might not have been posting vitriol or preaching what I think you should think about economic reform, but it was graceless all the same, a 180° deviation from the open mind and heart I so want to cultivate.

I don’t have an exact picture of what my role should look like, now that soap-boxer and head-buried ostrich are out, but I’m willing to explore the possibilities in between. I might just stick with listener (and occasional blogger) for now. Like so many other Americans, I want change, but the change I’m craving has less to do with policies and more to do with people, and people aren’t something to be argued away. We’re all roommates on this planet, charged by our very design with caring for each other, and the fact that we’re each wired to see the world uniquely doesn’t have to be a curse. I’d much rather take it as a gift, these purple-colored glasses for election season, these opportunities to stand for my belief in understanding yours better.

4May

Do-Over

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

The tips of my ears burst into flame as I hustled the girls across the sun-baked parking lot and into the car. I felt sure that everyone in the store was staring at me, the foreign young mom who had just tried to do a good deed and spontaneously combusted. I couldn’t bring myself to look back, I couldn’t, and a new wave of heat billowed up my cheeks. What had I just taught my girls? Patronization? Irresponsibility? Penance, maybe? Were they learning cowardice from me in that very moment? I hoped they wouldn’t tell Dan. Really, my only coping strategy was to pray that we’d escape notice, and I wished with all the fervor of the shame-flushed that the woman we’d left on the curb would forget my face the moment we drove away.

That morning had unfolded with the sticky sweetness of late summer. The girls and I had breakfasted, hung the laundry, and headed to the grocery store to pick up some essentials. I was working out just how many ripe watermelons I could justify as essential (considering the one already taking up half our fridge, my husband would have said none; I would have said five, so I figured a compromise was somewhere in the two to three range) when I saw her. She wasn’t selling anything that day, only standing in the parking lot like an uprooted willow swaying in the heat. That she was there at all, trading in her time for the kindness or indifference of strangers, showed a heartbreaking kind of hope. It pierced me to remember how I had judged the spectacle of that hope in the past, how I had brushed away her courage and vulnerability as an annoyance. I knew this was the do-over I had prayed for.

She’s thirsty. A heart-nudge, one of those whispers of intuition that I’ve come to recognize as divine grace notes, steered my cart to a shelf of water bottles, and I tucked one among the watermelons. I felt instantly self-conscious—tampon aisle self-conscious—as if the item I’d just slipped into my cart would end up on the evening news and provoke international shock… but why? Even if I were to announce over the store’s loudspeaker that the bottle of water was meant for the woman in the parking lot, no one would care. Why was I so thoroughly discomfited?

I dawdled over checking out and putting groceries in the car, but finally it was just me with a water bottle in my hand and two little girls following me uncertainly toward the woman. She sat on a curb now, deflated, and I felt ridiculous in my sunglasses clutching the key to my air-conditioned car. Our disparity nauseated me with guilt. I felt a wild need to apologize for being born into a different life than she was, for buying watermelons while she begged, and for walking up to her now offering what she had not asked of me. Instead, I stammered out, “Here’s a bottle of water for you. I thought… with the heat…” I couldn’t meet her eyes, not even when she said a timid thank you and began to drink, and the only other word I could remember in that moment was “goodbye.”

My do-over was done, and as I hurried back to the car with flaming face, I couldn’t figure out at which aspect of it I had failed the most. According to insistent voices from my memory, I was damaging the economy by giving hard-won resources to a freeloader. All the You don’t work, you don’t eat philosophies I’ve ever heard converged to berate me for encouraging this woman’s lifestyle, and somewhere in there, the old adage about teaching a man to fish groped around for a point. From the other side of the spectrum, hyper-compassionate ideologies blasted me for not having done enough. Only a measly bottle of water to a woman who in need? My actions had made a mockery of her situation. The ostrich part of my personality mumbled from deep in the sand that I had presumed far too much, involved myself in something that wasn’t my business. My polite Southern roots chided me for my horrible attempt at conversation. I shouldn’t have done anything, I should have done more, I should have bought an umbrella back in December and cleared myself of any further obligation, I should have at least asked her name. My ears burned.

~~~

The water bottle incident happened last summer, and I still haven’t figured out where to assign my feelings about helping the down-and-out we encounter on a weekly basis. I know that poverty can be a politically charged minefield, and even though I prefer to stay out of those debates—like, continents away—I still tend to see a lot of issues in the epic scope of The Common Good. And it makes me crazy. (See above.) Of course I’m going to over-think a bottle of water until it becomes an economic and moral crisis; that’s how I’m made. It’s not how I want to be, though, subjecting the needs of my fellow humans to a gauntlet of opinions as I combust with guilt. I just want simplicity, the freedom to follow my heart-nudges with a whole mind.

That’s where people like Erika come in. Erika is the kind of soul-sister who would have snuck me out to go dancing had we known each other in our teens (maybe we’ll sneak out of the same nursing home together one day?), and she posted a story yesterday about a homeless man and a trip to Froyo World that undid about a million years of politically-correct anxiety in my chest. Loving with intention—that’s it. No expectations or grand schemes to change the world. No pressure to manage others’ lives. No political formulas or lines in the sand, and certainly no cost-benefit analysis. Just love plus intention.

Since that bungled parking lot encounter last summer, I’ve been waiting for answers, rows of watertight logic to categorize my debate so that I can make a clearly informed decision next time I see a beggar. What I wasn’t expecting was to realize that the debate no longer matters to me. It really doesn’t though. When I read that Erika and her family are buying an extra coffee each time they go to Starbucks so they can share it with someone who needs a lift, my heart jumps in recognition. This is it, the versatile beauty of love packed into cup, and maybe it’s not meant to feel comfortable, but I can finally let go of needing it to feel reasonable. Love has never followed the rules of reason anyway.

I’m not saying that it’s suddenly going to be easy for me to walk up to strangers and offer bottles of water. I still have the self-consciousness thing working against me, remember, and I’m guessing the should/shouldn’t debate will try to make itself heard again. But goodness, if any kind of intentional living is worth practicing on a regular basis, love is it. All I need now is another do-over.

4May

Fwd: Crusade

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

Three of the contacts in my e-mail address book have yet to realize that the Age of Forwards is dead. All three are relatives, and they tend to take some strong political stances that I don’t share, so for the sake of staying on good terms with my family at large, I usually delete these forwards without a glance. Today, however, two of them sent the same e-mail, and I made the mistake of reading it:

“Saturday, May 8, 2010 is WALK NAKED IN AMERICA DAY!
If a Muslim male looks upon a naked woman, other than his wife, he must commit suicide. In an effort to help weed out neighborhood terrorists, all women in America are asked to walk out of their house at 1:00pm, completely naked, and circle their neighborhood block for one hour.”

I felt sick, perhaps even more than I did a few weeks ago when that Facebook status was making the rounds. You probably saw some variation of it: “Dear God, I noticed you’ve been taking my favorite celebrities, and I just wanted you to know that Obama is my favorite president.”

But this isn’t a post about politics. This is about death.

~~~

Yesterday, a woman I had never met passed away. Her husband was one of my university classmates, but I hadn’t kept up with his life until last week when their story spread among my circle of acquaintances. She was six months pregnant with their fourth child when she had to undergo an emergency operation to remove cancerous spots from her lungs. She went into cardiac arrest. The baby was delivered healthy, albeit extremely premature, but my schoolmate’s wife slipped away after a few days of desperate attempts to save her life.

I did not know this woman personally, and from what I’ve heard about her, we would not have had a lot in common. However, I joined the thousands of friends and supporters hoping, praying for a miracle, and I now grieve her death along with them. Her children will grow up without her goodnight kisses. Her husband will face the difficult decisions ahead alone. Everyone who loved her, everyone who would have come to love her, every person she would have touched along the corridors of a full-term life is now bereft. Nothing about this is remotely funny.

I think of our next door neighbors in the States, a married couple with a young son and a taxi business. We swapped power tools, shared watermelon in the backyard, and tried together to help a neighborhood boy caught in a tragic situation. They gave us Natalie’s first bicycle. The husband mowed our lawn along with his. They also happened to be devout Muslims. If we categorized them as terrorists for their belief in Allah, we would deserve to be categorized as Crusaders for our belief in God. However, prejudice is probably a reality they have learned to put up with a long time ago.

But to joke about forcing our next-door neighbor to commit suicide? To turn the idea of leaving his son fatherless, his wife widowed, and his friends brokenhearted into some kind of patriotic comedy? To quip about tricking God into offing the president? To slap an animated gif onto a death wish and call it funny? It makes me see stars. That professed Christians can be not simply callous but malicious about other people’s lives shocks, saddens, and enrages me all at once, and I have to say… sentiments like that help me understand where a terrorist might find motivation in the first place.

7Apr

Second Opinion

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

A Middle-Eastern man walks around our building playing the one song he knows on his accordion. It sounds like a sea lion in distress, and Sophie wakes up from her nap in terror. The man stands under our window shouting “Signora! Signora!” and squawking away on his instrument for a solid five minutes while I try to comfort my sobbing baby. I know he expects me to toss down some coins, but I’m more inclined to toss the refrigerator at him. I think of pretending not to see him and dumping a bucket of water out the window. I think of yelling at him to go away, to stop tormenting us with his horrible playing. I think of throwing a euro coin at his head so hard it sticks… but he cornered me into giving him a euro once before, and I’m still seething at his undeserved gain.

I have a long-standing animosity toward illegal immigrants. Maybe not all illegal immigrants, but the ones who want something from me… the tall African men selling knock-off watches by the station, the short Indian men shoving roses toward us on dates downtown, the Albanian beggers canvassing the trains, the kerchiefed women knocking on our car window. I tell them “No, no,” avoiding eye contact and adding up their annoyance as criminal charges in my mind.

I’ve had ample opportunities to judge my reaction to foreigners since moving to Italy, where countless refugees take advantage of the long and unprotected coastline. It is my understanding that European laws require incomers to stay in the country of entry unless they are specifically accepted by other countries, so Italy’s larger cities are full of clandestini—unwanted immigrants with little hope of finding legitimate work.

An acquaintance of ours routinely yells at beggars to go get a real job, and I get why he’s angry. But my husband’s approach is the one that stops me in my tracks. He waves hello and smiles at the Pakistani windshield washer who works the traffic light by our house. Dan lets him squeegee the front of our car for a euro or two and asks him how his day is going, and the man’s face floods with light. His job has to suck—standing in an intersection all day asking belligerent motorists if he can wash their windshields—but he always answers cheerfully with many thanks and good wishes. He also takes care that his window-washing crew never hassles us like they do the other vehicles.

I did a mental backflip when I realized how different my husband’s actions were from my own… how, for him, the inherent importance of people applies even to those whose source of income is annoying us. I’m embarrassed to admit that this is hard for me to remember. Prejudice against other races and lifestyles is something I learned early enough in life to become instinctual, and when I see a peddler, my mind instantly buzzes with superiority. I hate that compassion is never my first instinct, but at least it’s started piping in as a second opinion.

Instinct: That accordion player is terrorizing my child. He must die.

Second opinion: He probably can’t find any other work and is counting on his musical talent (however dubious) to support his family. Just think what awful circumstances he must have come from if playing an accordion for tips is a better living than what he could find in his own country! And you can at least be glad that he’s not playing a tuba. Put down the refrigerator.

Third opinion: My husband deserves a hug.

6Nov

A Vote of Conscience

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Dan and I had no illusions when he started graduate school a year after our wedding. We knew there were no savings accounts in our immediate future, no ~~working~~ fancy cars, and certainly no cushions of wealth to fall on if things grew tight. However, we were excited for his opportunity to get a degree in a field he loved, and his stipend provided for our few needs. There were only two things we could not purchase on our own: a house (mortgage payments would be far more affordable than rent, plus they would be an investment rather than a complete loss) and health insurance. I even took various jobs I hated to help out, but it wasn’t enough. That time was very frightening for us; a new baby was quickly on her way, and we lived in a moldy one-bedroom apartment without the thousands of dollars needed for health insurance.

I cringed the first time I walked into the social services building down the street. Waiting rooms were crowded with regular people, all looking carefully down at their shoes, and I felt embarrassed by my decent clothes. At the same time, I wanted to shout to everyone in the building that I didn’t belong there. Dan and I weren’t poor; we just didn’t have any money. I wanted everyone to know that we both worked, very hard. We weren’t like everyone else in the building.

But of course we were. The more I looked around, the more I noticed young mothers struggling against tears as they asked for food stamps to feed their children. I saw impoverished elderly couples applying for help to pay their outrageous prescription bills. I ran into our next-door neighbor wearing his best suit, hoping to find a better job than his one-car taxi business so he could work his way out of bankruptcy. Not one of us was sitting around thinking Ahh, this is the life; the government takes care of me, and I don’t have to do a thing! We were struggling, all.

The day Natalie was born, she had to have surgery, and the initial bill was $80,000 (not counting the next eleven days she spent in the NICU). Because of Medicare, we did not have to pay a penny of the bill that would have derailed our entire lives. Several months later, we were able to purchase a little three-bedroom house with a closing costs loan from the government (which we have since paid off) and start saving on mortgage, utilities, and transportation. We survived those few years because we were not alone in the world; we received enough help to get us on our feet, and with his graduate degree, my husband is able to have a good job that he enjoys.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard family and friends say that Democratic policy will just lead to rampant laziness and teach people that they can get away with sitting at home all day, mooching off the government. They are outraged that Obama wants to raise taxes on the rich to provide health coverage and better education for the poor. Where did your kindness go? I want to ask them. We used to be some of those poor, and our lives are immensely better for the help we got. Poor does not mean lazy. It does not mean criminal. It simply means “needy,” and why would anyone want to deny help to the ones who need it most? Would you really horde your $250,000 salary if it meant that babies would starve whose parents couldn’t afford college educations to then get good jobs? Would you prevent “socialism” if it meant that people could not pay for emergency room visits or medicine? Would you deny help to “the least of these” in order to teach them an irrelevant lesson about responsibility?

I voted with my conscience this election, and I’m deeply grateful that our future president and his lovely wife understand the power of kindness. Wealth and foreign control pale in comparison to the worth of people, and the hope this election has brought is not to be taken lightly. Even on the blazing-hot abortion issue, I am supporting Obama, who not only has a plan to decrease abortions by 95% but (more importantly) will be increasing the government’s humanitarian work to prevent countless unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

People matter more than money. Kindness matters more than fairness. Opportunity matters more than tradition. This is what I believe with all my heart as a mother, a friend, a citizen, a Bible-reader, and an unaffiliated voter, and this is why I am awed by gratefulness for the next president of the United States.

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