primary season

I don’t want an old white man for president. I don’t want a young Hispanic woman. Or a middle aged black woman or a gay man or a rich man or a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a business person or a veteran or a transgender or a queer or any other label you can think of, whether they’ve been historically oppressed or historically under- or over-represented or born into privilege or born into hardship. I could not possibly care less what material the spoon that they were born with in their mouth was made of. Nor do I give even one tiny rat’s ass about their age or religion or the color of their hair or what their voice sounds like or whether they roll in a chair or walk with a limp or run in boots or brogues or high heels or whatever. I don’t need someone who dresses well or smells good or has eyes that are not too far apart and perfectly white teeth. And I sure as shit do not need someone who is like me in any of those unimportant ways. Not. One. Bit. Because the adjectives attached to us rarely define our character and the failure to know that fact brings about a whole raft of ugliness and prejudice and missed opportunities.

I want someone with integrity, a long history of integrity. Someone who tells the truth. Someone who has taken the circumstances of their life and forged them into fortitude and perseverance and dedication to the goal of helping all Americans, not just some small segment of Americans. Someone who doesn’t have their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, someone who has the strength of their opinions and always has. Someone who can’t be bought and so will never be called upon to sell out my interests to their patrons – many of whom are happy to engage in the most harmful forms of corporate socialism and corporate welfare and for whom the bottom line is almost always more important than the common good. Over-enfranchised string pullers who feel that their fair share of rewards should always be up near the infinite and that their fair share of sacrifice should always be down toward zero.

I want someone who reaches out to their fellow Americans and fellow politicians of any affiliation, someone who builds bridges, not someone who burns them everywhere they go. Someone who is of this country, of our people and for our people yet also knows that we are just one country amongst many – on one particular side of an imaginary and ultimately meaningless demarcation that should never allow us to feel separate from those on the other side of it – other humans living behind their own imaginary lines whose troubles or triumphs we can not even begin to imagine, much less know how to solve. I want someone who understands that we are all here together, breathing the same air and needing the same water, no matter what side of those arbitrary lines we live on or were born on and who, as the saying goes, only ever looks down on others in order to extend a hand to help them up.

I want someone who cares deeply about our environment, not just as a place where trophies can be collected but as a place where life can be sustained. The only place we know of where life can be sustained. And so they fight tirelessly to protect it. All of it.

I want someone who doesn’t engage in fear-mongering and doesn’t idolize dictators or seek to emulate the kind of totalitarian regimes that my father and other American soldiers like him went to war to fight against. Someone who cherishes and respects our constitution and the ideals behind it, not someone who thinks they’re above it. Someone who doesn’t think they are the only one with solutions. A collaborator, a compromiser, someone who is dedicated to finding the best answers to the most important questions, not some wrong-headed buffoon who thinks they have them all already. Somebody with an effortless facility for saying “I never thought of that” or “I was wrong” or “Tell me more, please.” I want somebody who understands the power of curiosity and humility and is dedicated to learning and improving - for themselves and for the entirety of the people they will be elected to represent. 

I want the best listener ever. One who listens deeply and patiently with an open mind and an open heart. Someone who is sensitive enough to shed a tear at the horrors that people or nature or happenstance inflict upon humanity and someone who is strong enough to fight against those horrors and to fight for the weak, the disenfranchised, the tired, the poor, the oppressed and the “wretched refuse of your teeming shore”, even when that shore is not our shore. I want a president who is long on compassion and short on arrogance.

I want a spiritual president: a seeker; not a zealot or a false prophet who would weaponize one faith or another to “appeal to the base” or to appear pious or to appear to be taking the moral high ground when, in actuality, they are only in it for their own personal glory. I want a visionary, who can lead us all toward “a more perfect union” for all, not someone who leads us toward civil war by actively, destructively pitting one American against another. Someone who works to overcome racism and ageism and sexism and every other –ism that leaves most out while only including the few.

I want a woman or a man of some race, some color, some creed and some sexual orientation or gender identification who is tall or short or fat or thin or young or old but who is deeply and genuinely dedicated to representing my interests, the interests of my fellow American citizens, and the interests of all of our fellow frail humans living here together on this beautiful fragile planet.

That’s what I want.