Hope

About sixteen years ago, then Senator Barrack Obama came out with a book called “The Audacity of Hope”. I used to see this book on the shelf and be very cynical about it. I was a John McCain fan. He was a hero for crying out loud, but he also showed great courage in backing down comments directed at Obama and in fact, on national television, corrected a woman and said Obama was a good and decent man. For me, I was in the midst of a philosophical change towards what I believed in. I had long been a Republican by nature, but I was starting to understand that my principles were no longer aligning fully with the party politics. I was realizing I had moved to the center and had adopted a broader viewpoint. All of my kids at the time were hardcore Democrats. I listened and at times, scoffed under my breathe disdain for what they were believing. I had seen my boys hold election night parties for past presidential races and saw the dejection when their candidate had lost. I had never felt the same emotion when my candidate wasn’t elected. I simply shrugged my shoulders and went on and tried to figure out how I could best utilize current events to my benefit. That’s what I have always done, find the silver lining and move on. I knew that in most cases, the majority of all presidents became lame duck following the first two years in office. For the most part, this still stands true although the division is based on some pretty stupid ideological differences.

In the past, prior to Trump years, I always believed that the Republicans had the most basic of principles and morality held very close to their heart. The working man’s friend, with the exception to unions. At the time, I had very little respect for unions as the union in my own workplace was a harbor for lazy and non-committed people. The people that wanted more money to do less work. My difference was that I didn’t believe unions were bad for all time. When labor union organization came about, we had some pretty crappy working conditions, especially in the factories and manufacturing work areas. The union I was essentially represented by was a union supporting white-collar workers making a lot of money for the federal government. In fact, the very charters of federal government unions stated there were no uprising type responses allowed such as strikes. We all found out how that was handled in the Reagan years with the Air Traffic Controller strike. They were all fired, and the military stepped in and took over, many of whom found new jobs quickly as they were separating from the military. I still honored decency and fiscal conservative notions. However, I was becoming open-minded to the care of others. I felt though, that not all deserved the hand up that was offered because many of them worked hard, generationally, to maintain a handout. There were enough differences that I still was a right leaner naturally. By the time Obama ran for a second term, the Republican party was beginning to not provide me an avenue I could stand behind. I had become even more centrist and decided that I couldn’t vote for either of the two major parties and I would rather cast my vote to someone that rang true to me and theoretically waste my vote to show I wanted change. I got behind Gary Johnson from New Mexico, who was running on the Libertarian ticket. The next presidential election, I had joined the Green party and voted for Dr. Jill Stein. Then 2016 came along, I was so disillusioned that the Republican party would put a failed gameshow host at the top of the ticket and running against him was, what I believed to be a very crooked Hillory Clinton based on what I had read about them from their days in Arkansas politics ending with the Bill Clinton as the governor. In that year, for the first time since I was eligible to vote, I did not cast a vote for president. I voted in other seats at federal, state, and local levels, but I wasn’t going to support either one of the top dogs. As it turned out, the Democrats had miscalculated and Trump won due to a lack of voter turnout, this mostly due to lopsided polls in Clinton’s favor. The lead was so large, people thought it was in the bag and felt their little vote didn’t matter. It came down to the few battle-ground states and the electoral college that gave the win to Trump. Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump won the more decidedly necessary electoral college votes in the states that had heavy rural communities.

By the time 2020 came around, I was living in Texas and was having morning coffee with my dad and listening to his disillusionment for Trump and the state politics and the cast of characters in office in Austin. Most of my family in Texas is obviously Republican, very staunch in fact about it. But I was seeing a shift. I was starting to meet more and more people that had been hardcore for most of their lives, waning and finding themselves in the middle not liking either candidate and in a large part, voting to keep someone out of office and not voting to ensure someone was in that represented their core beliefs. Biden won, Trump was out thank God, yet we have still had to put up with the lunacy in the House of Representatives and with our state and local governments. How Biden was able to accomplish the things he has, has blown me away. We still had to put up with the stupidity of the House special councils trying to impeach Biden on baseless claims and not moving along when the fight was really over. I have been somewhat happy with the results, but daily am reminded from this state what is wrong in America.

The fight for the old days has always sat wrong with me. I don’t want to go back to being mandated second-class citizens. I don’t want to make women’s voices only heard in sewing circles and men allowed to decide the fate of the simplest of rights of which no man would ever give up and that is the right to decide what is best for themselves. I don’t feel I have to call people names to make myself look better. I don’t feel the economy is bad when it has already turned around and breaking records unlike ever seen before. I don’t want to lose the foundation of this country’s melting pot approach to the makeup of its citizens. And I don’t want Trump as president, nor do I want many of these corrupt politicians in office any longer. I support second amendment rights, but I also know it is essential to impose some serious gun laws that will reduce the gun violence in this country. I don’t want my grandchildren having to worry about coming home at night and should only worry about learning and making their parents proud. I don’t want retribution just because someone feels cheated that they weren’t elected. I want grown-ups in the offices that seriously promise this country some hope of unity. I don’t want a dictator and I don’t believe a fascist speaking idiot calling someone with empathy to social platforms a communist as. This is not a standup guy that calls our country a failing country. No one wants the American Dream to succeed through hard work anymore than I do and only a small percentage want to manipulate the system to benefit themselves through less than honorable measures.

I want hope and that hope lies in someone that, for most of my life, I would not have considered was representing me. Kamala Harris does promise a better future and I can’t believe I’m saying this, I believe what Michelle Obama said in her speech that hope is on the table for an America that I want to see. One that stands behind it’s people instead of promising an age-old trickle-down policy that has failed time and time again, but does make people that are rich even richer and those that are economically challenged more so. Hope is for all of us. Fair play and an ethical approach to everyone is right. Fealty and bowing to a convicted felon, failure through election after election, and no policy commitment, and only commitment to himself isn’t the promise of America for me. I don’t want that; I want to believe things are going to get better for us all. I want to believe in hope and the audacity of it!