Ditto! I’m right there with you, well at least 80% of the time.
Anne Lamott
13 October 2024
Oy gevalt and God Almighty and Holy Toledo. How is it possible that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are in a dead heat, not with Harris just a little bit ahead but with the two of them neck and neck. It is literally a coin toss.
I am a dropout, and thus unable to make any sense of this political reality at all. I should have stayed in college! As it is, my mind is just blown. Panic is setting in, but more than that—or in a dead heat with that—I am stunned with confusion.
I keep thinking of what David Sedaris said, that if you’re still undecided, it’s like having a flight attendant asking if you want the chicken, or the shit with ground glass on it, and you ask, “How is the chicken cooked?”
Yesterday I did a long event at a local church, taking questions midway through, and it will not surprise you to hear that there were a number about how we can possibly survive the next three weeks.
I also heard from the minister the three-part structure for a sermon: what you are going to be talking about, talking about that, and then summarizing what you have been talking about.
So, part one: I am going to be talking about how we will we come through the next 23 days, with the very real possibility that a man with fascist aspirations and dementia, a proud racist and convicted rapist, is going to win this election.
Part two: Some of you have an unshakeable faith in God or Goodness, or Gus, the Great Universal Spirit, all the time, and are positive that He or She or They will not let fascism land in America. I think that is very nice. I myself am a tiny bit concerned. So my plans is to keep writing my Get Out the Vote Postcards, panic, breathe, stick together, sink into despair, draw flowers on my GOTV postcards, which gives me hope (I am a simple people), take care of each other, lose all hope, take care of the poor, take walks and pray, gasp for breath, not take the polls so seriously this far away from the election, panic anyway, do my postcards, donate, breathe.
Form small friendly groups to do the GOTV work. Remember Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Band together with friends.
I will adhere to my friend David Roche’s Church of 80% Sincerity, and keep the faith 80% of the time, trust in the democratic process 80% of the time, try not to hate the opponents 80% of the time, and not try to stress eat my body weight in fried food, 80% on the time. David says, “We in the Church of 80 Percent Sincerity do not believe in miracles. But we do believe that you have to stay alert, because good things happen.”
Optimism, and unconditional love! He believes in optimism as a decision, and that unconditional love is a reality (but has a shelf life of about eight to 10 seconds. So instead of beating yourself up because you only feel it fleetingly, you savor those moments when it appears. “So we might say to our beloved, ‘Honey, I’ve been having these feelings of unconditional love for you for the last eight to 10 seconds.’ Or, ‘Darling? I’ll love you till the very end of dinner.'”)
The same goes for optimism: I honestly feel confident, 80% of the time, that we’ve got this thing, as long as we stay alert and keep helping get out the vote in swing states, however we can. (Here is one place to start: https://swingleft.org/p/strategy).
I am going to remember and practice all my tired old sayings—that everything will work again if you unplug it for three minutes, including you; that laughter is carbonated holiness; that hopes begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.
My son Sam has this tattooed on his forearm: “We never give up.”
Also, I will be practicing the school of yoga that I developed in my twenties, called Prone Yoga. You simply lie down a lot and breathe, or doze, or as it is expressed in the scriptural texts, you maintain the prone.
Now to the third part of my sermon, what I was trying to say: I think we’ve got this. I would much rather be us than them. Take the action and the insight follows—help get out the vote however you can. Do your postcards or canvassing. Try not to obsess about each day’s polls, 80% of the time. Watch hilarious movies. Practice Prone yoga. Take care of the poor, ie, fill a couple of bags and take them to your local food bank. Stick together. Remember Dr. King saying, “Don’t let them get you to hate them,” because this strips you of your center, power and usefulness. Plus, Thank god and phew: we’re all together in this.
Amen.