(ed. note: this post was written the day Joe Biden won the election.)
After the week we’ve had, America, let’s get ourselves this I Voted IPA, from Old Town & Gigantic brewing.
It’s… melon-y. Can’t say I’m super fond of that. Honeydew and then quite the bite on the finish.
But you know, by the third sip I have to admit it’s kinda growing on me. Not enough to recommend, but it’ll do.
I am seeing a lot of very happy, or very depressed takes on the election results and I am stuck in the middle of those. It has broken my faith in people, just a little bit, that millions of them decided to choose fascism’s comfort over democracy’s thrilling uncertainty. That cruelty was the value, not charity. It was an easy choice-a moral one-and many of us failed it.
It hurts. To know, with absolute certainty, that there are people who would look upon their fellow citizens and decide that the people in charge should look at anyone different as if they were inhuman, because they weren’t straight, white males, or rich. That people who didn’t have the blind luck to be born straight white men should really suffer.
What do I do with that information? What does anyone do?
But. That question is for tomorrow.
Today, we look at a door that has unlocked: One that has the possibility of a world where something better is possible. We do not let the trauma of the last four years, prevent us from seeing the possibility of the next forty.
If only we have the courage to walk through it. To dig in and do the work of prying that damn thing open, so we actually can stride, heads high, through this, together.
Nobody ever says “I faith this works out”. Because faith isn’t about work.
Hope is. So I choose hope, today and I choose to be happy, to honor all the efforts and joy of people who feel so relieved and to celebrate that, as a country, we chose to do the work, to make things better, to kick against the pricks. For one day, I raise my glass to everyone who made it possible for us to look to tomorrow and say: we can make it better.
To the voters, poll workers, ballot tabulators, organizers, postal workers who defied injustice, and especially to the BIPOC people- particularly the women – who showed up to save America from itself: thank you. This glass is raised in your honor.
A toast: Fuck Donald Trump.
A pint for Dionysus 