Vice President Kamala Harris on the debate stage with former president Donald Trump touched a body memory, a sadness and fear of which I had not been conscious. Slightly longer post than usual, therefore. FYI. [Image: public domain: www.commonswikimedia.org.]
Several folks asked me over the course of days before the debate, “Are you going to watch the debate?” Brian and I both had commitments in the early part of the evening, but both of us had named our intentions to not watch. Exquisitely aware it would be going on. Prayerfully attentive for its significance(s) in our civic life right now. “I don’t think so,” I had mostly responded, feeling ambivalent.
I remember getting into a lavender-salts bath at about 9 p.m., saying a worded-prayer out loud for VP Harris, for the debate, which also meant for our former president. This is not a ‘both-sides-ism’ in the least, but I do recognize the power of prayer for interconnection, for the good of all. I soaked for a while. Got into my pajamas to “read in bed” until Brian decided to come upstairs. And then I couldn’t not watch, at least with the sound off, on the NYTimes livestream screen, then the Washington Post live-stream screen.
Each news outlet had reporters in the room, giving “updates” via text on the media-outlet-website. This I could do. I could watch the facial expressions of both candidates. I could see who was talking, and for how long. But I kept the sound off, letting the topics and pieces emerge in the reporters’ updates. After about 95 minutes, I turned it off and called it a night. I did sleep better, knowing she had more than held her own. By most civil-civic accounts, she won handily. She of course did not win on the right-wing news media accounts nor in Trump’s sense of the debate. But he wouldn’t admit he lost the last election, so…hard to account for much of what he says. It stuns me that his supporters, nearly half the country by the polls, allow him this pugnacity. “It’s just politics,” perhaps they say.
Being who I am, of course I was cheering Harris on, relishing every dig, feeling more and more oxygen each time she baited his ego and he took the bait. She was powerful, well-prepared, able to point to her New Way Forward in the overly-limited ways a debate with Trump would allow. Of course there weren’t policy statements made clear, nor was there a clear differentiation of policies and plans for our country. His platform, now distanced in the media from Project 2025 but with clear ties in soundbites--yells in capital letters political cliches easily attractive to those triggered by fear, unresolved grief, overwhelming sense of loss of centrality and power in the world. VP Harris has a gentler, more nuanced plan/policy on her website, which of course will require the complications of actually governing, collectively, amidst diverse voices. It is therefore arguably vague, if nuanced.
It is the telos, the focus or vision, that differed the most in the debate. Both campaigns tote a "save America" vibe but the pathway forward places conflict in hugely disparate terms. Her campaign visibly incorporates diverse peoples and voices, knowing that will be messy but is necessary. Her platform will always be unfinished, perhaps even uncertain, because she wants all American voices involved. Trump's campaign is visibly white, male, middle-America and requires an obedience to top-down decision-making, made chaotic by his own media styles. But his style touches the unresolved grief of so many who--consciously or unconsciously--prefer a strongman in charge. A savior. Here is where Christianity gets bastardized, helped by the historic church's traditionalism(s). His platform (and person) yells (in all capital letters) political cliches that easily trigger the unresolved-unresolvable? griefs that so many of us "in the middle of the country" know intimately. It saddened me to see the fear and blame placed on the Democratic Party in Trump's platform, which yes, I did read. No house will stand when one half blames the other for its pains, so we should all listen here. Therefore, I don't blame the Republican Party...but the alignment of Trump with autocrats should at least cause people of good faith pause. Regardless, none of this found any airtime on the debate stage with a candidate defending his ego and demonizing immigrants, like any autocrat has learned will work in a fearful, disengaged public.
So what will it take for those longstanding middle-America Republicans to actually engage, who cannot imagine themselves voting for any other party's candidate, simply because they never have?
I don’t know.
But my wounded self cheered when Kamala soundly trounced the man who is the living shell of so much that has wounded me--disregard for women's bodies and voices, bastardization of my own wisdom tradition, refusal of women's wisdom and voices, refusal to consider new voices amidst the necessary cliches of dying traditionalisms, refusal of our country's actual history in lieu of an ignorant wished-for one. Some of this is surely from 2016, but my body's response was deeper than that. For me, the significance of the debate is allowing me to grieve and release pent up grief from 2016, from so long ago, so present in my own cells. It’s about being a woman in a post-Christian but Christian-languaged nationalistic environment of Ohio in which both women and men refuse to see their urgently required role today in protecting women’s bodies, women’s concerns, women’s voices...no matter what.
I will do my very best to not do to unthinking, disengaged habitual Republicans what has been done to me in my woman’s body. I pledge to remain curious and welcoming of the divine spark in every human being. But yowza does this wound run deeply in me. If you are a habitual Republican, embarrassed by your party's candidate but voting for him anyway, I may be reactive and not at my best with you.
I know we are all doing our best. I trust local conversations, in-person, for our common Good. And I know we will vote in the leader we deserve, collectively. I'm just not sure that we deserve Kamala Harris...yet. There is simply too much local work yet to be done to repair our communal fabric(s), to demonstrate our local scenes can include the voices of every human being as divinely sparked opportunities of revelation and belonging. Haitians, in Springfield, for instance, for whom both Republican Dewine and Democratic Brown are working tirelessly to welcome amidst Trump/Vance antagonisms.
For my part, I will be working every day, in some fashion, to not deserve Donald Trump.
Comments