The delayed results of the presidential election will be revealed soon, but in many ways, those results will be secondary to what we already know now: we were wrong about America.

The fact that it was even close, the fact that more people voted for him a second time, the fact that a higher number of white women inexplicably affirmed him—it is all confirmation that whether we remove the very visible, unsightly symptom or not, the pervasive disease is still horribly afflicting us.

Numbed by a cocktail of optimism and ignorance, many of us imagined this was a sick, momentary aberration; a temporary glitch in the system that would surely be remedied: after so much ugliness, such open disregard for people of color, such inhumanity toward migrant children, such a sickening failure in the face of this pandemic—sanity would surely come to the rescue.

We were certain that we would collectively course-correct; that the pendulum that had so wildly swung toward inhumanity would come roaring back to decency in these days; that we would presently be basking in the glory of a radiant dawn referendum on all this bloated bigotry.

We thought we would be dancing on the grave of fascism.

We thought, of course the good people of this nation would come to their collective senses, leaving behind political affiliations and superficial preferences and ceremonial ties, to rescue us from a malevolence that had proven itself unworthy of its position and toxic to its people.

We were certain there would be a mass repudiation of the racism that this man has revealed and the violence he’s nurtured, because for all its flaws we really believed America was better than this.

We were wrong.

We were wrong to believe that white people weaned for decades on supremacy, would suddenly embrace disparate humanity and make more space at the table.
We were wrong to believe that white Christians would finally have the scales fall from their eyes and abandon their blind adoration of this vile false prophet of enmity, and once again embrace the expansive, compassionate heart of Jesus.
We were wrong to believe that kindness and science and facts and truth and goodness would be found more valuable than the fool’s gold of sneering, star-spangled, American greatness.
We were wrong to hope that more Republicans would cross party lines in order to defend their country from the greatest terrorist threat in our lifetime.
We were wrong to believe that hope would rise up to cast out fear.

And most of all, we were wrong about people we know and love and live alongside and work with and study beside; about our parents, spouses, siblings, uncles, best friends, and neighbors: they are not the people we thought they were and we do not live in the country we thought we lived in.

We believed the best about this nation and we were mistaken.

To many oppressed and vulnerable communities, to people who have long known the depth of America’s sickness because they have experienced it in traffic stops and workplace mistreatment and opportunity inequity and the bitter words of strangers—this may be less shocking news than it is to those of us with greater privilege and more buffers to adversity and the luxury of naiveté.

But this is the sober spot in which we stand now: realizing that our optimism about the whole of this nation was misplaced,
our prayers for the better angels of so many white Christians were unanswered,
our childish illusions that people were indeed basically good and decent, seared away in their reaffirmation of something that the rest of the watching world finds reprehensible.

And now, we’re left with two terribly unfortunate choices: leave the America we have, because it is so very different than the America we hoped for—or stay, realizing that we are surrounded by so many people for whom racism is not only not a deal breaker but a selling point; in a place we know is less safe and less decent and less kind than we wanted—not because of any politician but because of those who embraced him a second time, people who share our kitchen tables and churches and break rooms and cul-de-sacs.

I don’t know what the right decision is.

Right now, the only thing I know is that I expected something beautiful and life-affirming was going to mark this day and it isn’t.

I was certain we were better than him, but we are not.

I was so sure that even though I know hatred dies hard, that America was going to let love have the last, loudest word.

I thought I was wrong.

But maybe, I just have to wait to be right.

 

 

 

 

We’re all worried about Tuesday, America.

It is the place our minds and hearts are solely fixed on.

Right now our energies are understandably marshaled and our hopes pinned to this singular day ahead, as if at the end of it we will have some resolution, some sense of closure—as if healing and rest will finally come.

But what if things don’t go that way?

What if the news is bad?

At a recent tour stop, a visibly exasperated woman asked me, through a breaking voice, “What if everything goes wrong on Tuesday? What do we do then? If we lose, where will the hope be?”

You may be asking yourself that.

I imagine hope then, will be wherever it is for you now.

Regardless of what happens on Tuesday, whatever propels you into the voting booth needs to push you to your feet when the sun comes up in the morning. Because no matter the outcome and whether you feel vindicated or crestfallen—many things will still be the same:

You’ll still be surrounded by systemic ills and relational fracture and national discord. You’ll still have seen every grotesque reality that’s been uncovered over the past four years.
You’ll still be walking shoulder to shoulder with weary, wounded human beings who will be looking for compassionate people to see their suffering and to move toward them.
You’ll still have a specific front row seat to a place filled with terrors and traumas, and you’ll be the only one with your unprecedented ability to be what that world needs.

This isn’t just about an election.

It’s easy to believe that it is; that with the pull of a lever and a transfer of power, that our security will be restored or our demise guaranteed but that’s simply not true. We’ll still need to hold our leaders accountable and fight to be heard, and not fall asleep when apparent progress shows up.

I’d like to think that we are moved by something far greater than a date on the calendar or an election result or a candidate’s victory; that our collective elation or devastation do not reside in those things.

And ultimately, this isn’t just about the current President either.

If he were to disappear tomorrow, we would still be left with the fallout of everything he revealed: every bit of exposed ugliness, every cruel word uttered toward strangers, every disconnection we’ve endured from people we love.

We’ll still be who we are, surrounded by people being who they are, in the nation we’ve become—and in the resulting tumult we’ll need to navigate the turbulence around us and bridge the expanses between us.

So where will hope be if it all hits the fan on that Tuesday?

It will be you, finding whatever it is that is that pulls you out of the crippling funk of grief and sadness and disbelief you’ll want to stay in—and back into the fray of living.
It will be found in your faith convictions and your personal burdens; in your activism and your advocacy and in the stuff you’ll still believe in.
It will be found in you deciding what matters most in this life, and whether or not it still matters enough to defend and protect it even if the threats seem greater than they are now.

Hope will be in the sunrise and how you decide to meet it.

In that way, Wednesday is actually pretty important, too.

On that day, there will still be hungry people needing to be fed, strangers seeking refuge, outsiders needing welcome, hurting people looking for the healers.

No matter what happens, win or lose—you and I will need to place our energies and fix our gaze on the ways that we can choose gentleness and peace and generosity, far away from the ballot box. 

On November 3rd, we’ll experience one of the pivotal, unprecedented moments in our lifetime.
We’ll have a chance to allow our voices to be heard and to transform the very planet we’re standing on—as well as the one we leave to people who will follow us.
We’ll get to leave an inheritance to those we love, and a legacy for those we’ll never know.

This particular Tuesday, we’ll get to let our lives impact the lives of countless human beings with one simple, yet profound act that we participate in. It will be our sacred opportunity to speak precisely from our deepest convictions, to let our hearts clearly resound into the world, and to know that we can be the difference in the day. In the face of a deafening fear that would gladly overwhelm us, we’ll get the chance to let love have the last, loudest word. 

This is beautiful news, but the even better news is that we have that opportunity well before Tuesday and we’ll have it long after it as well.

As you read these very words, you have it.

Every single moment we’re here, you and I get to be agents of equity and justice. We don’t have to wait for an event to choose such things, and we can’t be fooled into believing they have an expiration date either. 

The gravity of this moment isn’t just about changing Presidents and Senate seats and flipping districts and political victories (though it is certainly is about all those things.) Yes, legislatively there is so much hanging in the balance this particular Tuesday—but the stakes are always similarly stratospheric, even if they are less noticeable.

The really critical act, is remembering that leveraging your life on behalf of others isn’t an event, it’s your ever-present calling. It’s about you and your daily ability to make this place more compassionate and generous and kind than when you found it. You get to be helper and healer and listener; to be an ally and an advocate and an activist.

There will be no way you can lose that.

As you move toward this Tuesday, don’t miss the countless opportunities you have, with every seemingly infinitesimal decision to elect hope, well before you ever step into a voting booth, and long after you walk out into the day.

So yes, please vote—but regardless of the results of the election, remember that you always have that choice.

Yes, Tuesday is important.

Wednesday, too.

Today is just as critical.

This week is the most important week of your life.

It always is.

Every time I walk through the terminal at the Syracuse airport, I cry.

I don’t even attempt to stop it anymore.

As I pass through the sliding doors to the drop off/pickup area outside, I reach a small, nondescript patch of concrete that has become a memorial site for me: it’s the last time my father and I had physical contact.

Seven years ago, my wife and children and I were heading back to North Carolina after a relaxing week with family. As always, he pulled me close, pulled his cheek against mine, kissed me and said, “Love you, sweetheart.” 

I never saw him again.

He died suddenly while on a cruise a month later.

I’m grateful for that one last kiss.

I’m grateful to have heard him call me “sweetheart” one final time. 

I’m glad my father adored me and let me know that. I know without a doubt that it’s made me a better father and a more compassionate human and a more affectionate man—and I feel really sorry for men who don’t understand what a gift this is to a son.

Recently, there was social media criticism from Conservatives, of a photo of Joe Biden embracing and kissing his adult son, Hunter. Supposedly grown men threw out every sophomoric homophobic slur and all kinds of ridiculous incest joke garbage—which revealed far more about them than about the Vice President. They revealed the poverty of manhood we have in this nation: the absence of real, mature, complex role models on the Right.

Joe Biden is a fiercely loving father. That’s something we should celebrate. That should be normal.

I tried to fathom how emotionally-stunted someone has to be to find this strange or even newsworthy, let alone fodder for ridicule: how embracing your child at any age is something adult men are unsettled or intimidated by. What is the appropriate cut-off age for affection of a father to a son, and how exactly is it an indictment on their masculinity? 

The pundit who initially posted the photo, did so with the caption: Does this look like an appropriate father/son interaction to you?

To which I replied, “Maybe your father never loved you that much.”

Fathers are supposed to love their sons—unashamedly, completely, and affectionately. They are supposed to be overflowing in their pride and exploding with joy. That’s the whole point of being a father to begin with.

If you’re at a place where you’re making fun of a father who lost one son, for tightly holding and kissing the son he still has with him—well, that probably explains a lot about you and the kind of men you emulate and look up to and vote for.

My father died before I received national attention for my writing, and never saw me on TV or read one of my books, but as I wrote in the dedication to my first one: “he loved me before I went viral.” I never once doubted how much I meant to him because he made sure there was no doubt in me or to anyone else. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful he was effusive with his affection for me, and for teaching me that real men show the people they love just how much.

Fathers should kiss their sons so that their sons grow up to be men who don’t see compassion as a character flaw, who don’t mistake toughness for strength, who aren’t afraid to love people fully, who are secure in expressing deep emotions.

We could use more men like that these days, and when we come across men like that we should respect them and not ridicule them.

The bond my father and I have is an embrace that never ends and a kiss that is still pressed against my cheek.

I cry at the airport, because I had a father worth missing.

May all our sons.

 

 

To Whom It May Concern,

We recently found ourselves in a now-familiar location: hopelessly stuck in an unnavigable impasse on our respective paths, unable to find a way forward. And, as in so many times before, when the friction became too great and the exchange too heated and the tension too uncomfortable, you dropped an all-too-familiar final salvo designed to stop conversation and temporarily defuse the situation:

“We’re just going to have to agree to disagree.”

I disagree.

I refuse these terms.

Such a concession assumes that we both have equally valid opinions, that we’re each mutually declaring those opinions not so divergent that they cannot be abided; that our relationship is of greater value than the differences—but that isn’t exactly true for me.

We don’t just disagree here—you’re wrong.

I believe you’re deeply, profoundly, and egregiously wrong; the kind of wrong about the kinds of things that I can no longer excuse or make peace with or overlook—because that would be a denial of who I am and what matters to me, the values I have spent a lifetime forming.

This is not a disagreement.

We are not simply declaring mismatched preferences regarding something inconsequential. We’re not talking about who has the best offensive line in the NFL, or whether Van Halen was better with Dave or Sammy, or about what craft beer pairs best with a cheesesteak, or about the sonic differences of CDs and vinyl. On such matters (though I will provide spirited debate), I can tolerate dissension.

We’re not even talking about clear misalignments on very important things: how to best address climate change or what will fix our healthcare system or how to reduce our national debt or what it will take to bring racial equity. Those subjects, while critically important, still have room for constructive debate and differing solutions. They are mendable fractures.

But this, this runs far deeper and into the marrow of who we each are.

At this point, with the past four years as a resume, your alignment with this president means that we are fundamentally disconnected on what is morally acceptable—and I’ve simply seen too much to explain that away or rationalize your intentions or give you the benefit of the doubt any longer. 

I know what your reaffirmation of him is telling me about your disregard for the lives of people of color, about your opinion of women, about your attitude toward Science, about the faith you so loudly profess, and about your elemental disrespect for bedrock truth. I now can see how pliable your morality is, the kinds of compromises you’re willing to make, the ever-descending bottom you’re following into, in order to feel victorious in a war you don’t even know why you’re fighting.

That’s why I need you to understand that this isn’t just a schism on one issue or a single piece of legislation, as those things would be manageable. This isn’t a matter of politics or preference. This is a pervasive, sprawling, saturating separation about the way we see the world and what we value and how we want to move through this life. 

Agreeing to disagree with you in these matters, would mean silencing myself and more importantly, betraying the people who bear the burdens of your political affiliations— and this is not something I’m willing to do. Our relationship matters greatly to me, but if it has to be the collateral damage of standing with them, I’ll have to see that as acceptable.

Your devaluing of black lives is not an opinion.
Your acceptance of falsehoods is not an opinion.
Your defiance of facts in a pandemic is not an opinion.
Your hostility toward immigrants is not an opinion.
These are fundamental heart issues.

I’m telling you this so that when the chair is empty this Thanksgiving, or the calls don’t come, or you meet with radio silence, or you begin to notice the slow fade of our exchanges, I want you to know why: it’s because I have learned how morally incompatible we are. It doesn’t mean I don’t respect you or even love you, but it means proximity to you isn’t going to be healthy.

I’ve been disagreeing with people all my life. That isn’t the issue here.

Were we talking about anything less than the lives of other human beings, I’d be more than willing to disagree with you and, but since we are talking about the lives of other human beings—I can’t.

I believe you’re wrong in ways that are harming people.
You’re wrong to deny the humanity of other human beings.
You’re wrong to justify your affiliation with this violence.
You’re wrong to embrace a movement built on the worst parts of who we are.

I simply can’t agree to that.