I woke up this morning well before the sun, thinking about my enemies.
I’ve been watching them.
I’ve been listening to them.
And I’ve finally figured them out.
“It’s all fear.” I think to myself. “That is the engine the whole thing runs on. It’s all he has to offer as a candidate, and they’re so damn terrified that this is enough. They’re embracing the politics of fear.”
This realization makes me pity them, and resent how shallow and gullible they are, and feel quite superior to them—and I can’t fall back to sleep.
Suddenly my 6-year comes and crawls into bed with me. She presses up tightly against my shoulder, her soft face soon half-buried in the covers, the cast from her recently fractured arm peeking out next to her. I lean over and kiss the top of her head, smelling her hair and smiling.
It’s then that I realize that I too am embracing the politics of fear in these days, that I too am terrified:
I’m afraid of my daughter spending these next precious years hearing that the bad people are coming to get her.
I’m afraid of her being taught that the color of someone’s skin or their religion or their inclination to love makes them the bad people.
I’m afraid she will be told that the monsters aren’t under her bed anymore, they’re close and all around her and she needs to defend herself.
I’m afraid that she and her brother will inherit a meaner, less compassionate, more violent homeland.
I’m afraid that she will grow up around a Christianity that no longer bears any resemblance to Jesus, because it traded away his theology of love for a religion of vengeance and war rhetoric.
I’m afraid of her hearing her President berate women based on their weight or their appearance or their marital difficulties, so often that she allows those things to define her.
I’m afraid that she will grow up believing that if she’s gay she’s not deserving of love or happiness or marriage.
I’m afraid that someone else will get to determine what she does with her own body.
I’m afraid that she won’t inherit a country defined by equality, liberty, and decency anymore, but by ego and bluster, and bullying.
I’m afraid that she’ll never have the America she deserves to have.
And here in this bed with my sweet baby girl snuggled up next to me, I realize just how terrified I am right now. This reminds me of those I’ve seen as the enemy lately—and of how very similar we probably are in these moments.
I suppose we all embrace the politics of fear. We all believe and vote and move to protect something or to protect ourselves from something. We all defend that which we find precious.
I want my daughter to grow-up with an abundance of joy and a scarcity of pain. I want her to have a world big enough to accommodate her dreams and one safe enough to banish her nightmares. I want her to know love well and to be a stranger to hatred. I want her to feel free to fall but be fully released to fly.
I suppose these are the dreams all parents have for their children, even the ones I woke up thinking about this morning—the ones that make me afraid.
So I’ll just have to keep going. I’ll keep watching and listening and trying to understand what they see from where they stand and to remember that they may likely have someone pressed up against their shoulders who they adore.
And I’ll keep fearing what my heart tells me is worth fearing, because my daughter and her brother are worth it.
The sun is up. Now maybe I can get some sleep.
