There's a specific proper noun I've refused to use for the past four years. On Tuesday, I'll find out if I need to keep up my little private resistance for another four. That's the smallest scope possible to view Election Day in the United States, but the narrowness of my focus is helping me keep the whole thing in perspective.
I grew up in the Moral Majority, picketed health clinics as a high-schooler, watched my Dad get arrested for peaceful protest, and then visited him in jail on my eighteenth birthday. Recently, in a robust conversation about politics and theology with my son, I said "I'm not a one-issue voter, but if there were one issue I'd be willing to die for it'd be that one."
But the platform and the rhetoric and the hubris has become untenable. My scope for understanding what it means to be "pro" something has had to expand beyond all the false dichotomies I was taught in my political, social, and theological formation. I am politically homeless, voting one way so that I can give up my tiny resistance refusing to name those who don't deserve to be named.
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