WAS: What Adults are Saying about Forging History

Most times history happens to us--now is the other way around and for some, a doubleheader

We awake most days never expecting to make or witness history before the sun next falls. So was it on December 7, 1941; November 22, 1963; September 11, 2001; January 6th, 2021 and many, many other days. Amid our daily duties and concerns things happened forever changing lives and the historical arc that is America. As events unfolded we were shocked—disbelieving—as to what our eyes and ears relayed to our brains. History was thrust upon upon us and we responded as best possible. In our reactive role we mourned, screamed, shuttered, begged with our Gods and a hundred other things so that our minds and selves would survive what “history” had laid at our feet under the cruel cover of surprise.

In fewer instances we cracked eggs at dawn knowing that in the next few hours history would be made and we were forging it. July 20, 1969 was such a day as we awaited on the grainiest of all black and white images to show two Americans opening a spaceship hatch and descending a seven-rung ladder. A less remembered but almost equally awaited day was July 4, 1976. We held tight stomachs and full hearts as a magnificent parade of what was termed “tall ships” (the predominant transportation mode on the day of our country’s founding) sailed in alignment past the Statue of Liberty. (Side note: for those not old enough to know, America’s BiCentennial was a big effing deal). For many, January 20, 2009, was another of these days as the country ascribed into the Oval Office its first African-American executive.

In these instances history did not come upon us—we came upon it. We knew that when stepping first on the moon it was at best a dubious achievement. What can the moon bring us? But we also knew, at least in part, that getting there helped exorcise the hideousness of JFK’s murder. After all he was the one—while obtaining no obvious transactional upside—first suggesting Americans race to the moon before the decade ended.

We also knew that on the day of our BiCentennial (barely 30 years removed from World War II) our puffy pride was righteous. Just months removed from Vietnam and Nixon, and at the peak of the people’s economic standing, that celebration was remarkably unencumbered by war, economic turmoil and cultural polarization. Plus it was a mere four months before a Presidential election!

We knew with Obama that another important step in our nation’s growing pluralism had been achieved. It was a modern step and the first real-political signal the US had moved into the 21st century.

In the next few hours is another such day where we, the people, will knowingly forge history. We will complete our civic duty for the season and cast an electoral preference where the contestants, times and stakes are unlike anything in the Post WWII era. Beyond a mere competition between nominees of the normal two parties, this election is a referendum on many things that have made the US the “grand experiment” of democracy it has shone for almost 250 years. Never has there been an election where opponents were so asymmetrically poised to either grapple with the country’s problems or change the very paradigm by which the three branches of Federal government operate.

A vote for one side means the nation’s first woman President, partially thrust into a prematurely expected role like Harry Truman in the 1940s. On the other is a vote that supports a criminal, former President, awaiting more trials, to unfurl his dark vision of government on a country that in his view is even darker and has become an unprecedented hell-hole.

To be sure every election is America and its people forging history. But not since the Civil War has one ballot carried so much significance about the country’s future and culture at-large. Similar to being the referee at the Super Bowl where all those Roman-Numeral contests are critically important, some, just happen to more important and titanic than others. That is where we sit this morning. To vote to “Pass Go” into a split America where familiar government roles and structures hold sway or a detour in something unknown and dark that feels very much like a less-refined and fair-minded country than the world has long admired? That is our stark and straight choice—a fork in our political road and as the late Yogi Berra was fond of saying, “when you come to a fork in the road take it.”

That fork arrays the convicted against the careful; the condescending against the creative; the con against the consigliere. One is affirming and the other oblivious to what that means. Plus, as Washington Post reader/commentator Christine said recently in-part the candidate Trump gleefully reveals his own report card as:

The “billionaire” who hides his tax returns.

The “genius” who hides his college grades

The “businessman” who bankrupts casinos

The “playboy” who pays for sex

The “philanthropist” who defrauds a charity

The “patriot” who dodged the draft

The “innocent man” who won’t testify

From this we are to make an “all in” electoral decision whose result will turn governance toward alternative poles. Even in this crazy election where hyperbole has been rampant this is no overstatement. The choice we forge in history today will be full, whole and rapid. Its our place, the people’s, to make it.

As though this is not the heaviest of modern election burdens an important sub-plot has emerged in recent weeks where a referendum on democracy is not the only question to decide. Just beneath this colossal question lies another massive point. In becoming a vote about democracy, along the way this election has unbelievably, also become a referendum on women.

As the majority segment of our population women have continually sought greater political power. As far back as the 19th Amendment, when the right to vote was secured, women have continually made inroads into all sectors of political life without ever occupying the Oval Office. Given recent Supreme Court decisions and the paternalistic approach of candidate Trump, the legal, social and cultural self-interest of all women lurks in close periphery this year to the capital “D” and “R” found at the ballot’s top.

Though many may find this controversial, should women as political force fail to get candidate Harris across the finish, their standing as a political block may be dismissed for a long time. Literally this might mean efforts as far back as Susan B. Anthony, Mother Jones, Francis Perkins, Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro, onto the current era of Hillary Rodham and of course Harris, all of it, from all of them, will have yet placed a woman to the top office. It will mean twice Trump was elected over an alternative that was far more qualified, capable, skilled, and of course, female. That it would happen now, at time of greatest need, would be serious salt rubbed into the wound and invite head scratching about women and their electoral power.

As a voting group, that all women have been placed in this situation is hardly fair. But that women may judge this as men unfairly scrambling life can’t possibly be a new sentiment. However, just like any other voting block women are not monolithically described or aligned by single issues or interests. That is until unless…..unless the alternative is one that both legally and normatively re-ascribes women as de facto second class citizens. Unless the alternative seeks to “take care” of women as though in loco parentis has rejoined our senses. Unless one of two possible outcomes will continue to remove the agency for which women in this country have politically struggled for over a century. When these conditions apply, maybe all sisters must bond to overcome whatever differences and affirm a result that finally stamps them as the political mover and shakers of the season.

In the beautiful, exciting and rapidly-dying sport of thoroughbred racing, there comes a time in many races where the animal is “asked the question.” At this point a jockey more feverishly moves, encourages and even whips the horse to increase speed as the race nears its end. When asked this question favorably responding horses are those who best overcome fatigue, win and sometimes, become champions. In forging our history over the next few hours all of us are being asked a question, and oddly, women are being asked twice. We must now answer, fore it tells with what agency, authority and freedom we collectively aspire about governing ourselves.