Dispatch to My Fellow Americans #002

some thoughts up until the 2022 election

When it comes to politics, I personally don’t have much interest. Yes, I more or less keep up with the daily affairs of the political world, maybe more than most, but only at the cable news headline level. I don’t have the time or the interest to dig in deeply. I find it pretty boring and disheartening to watch politicians constantly either trying to get something accomplished or trying to prevent their opponents from accomplishing something.

I believe each one of us needs mostly to figure out how to take care of ourselves, support our family, friends and neighbors the best we can and build our own world the way we think it should be.

In my own case, I am an artist. I am an image maker. As a collage artist I put things together that don’t go together, I take bits and pieces of things and try to find an order for them to coexist in that yields an image that has internal integrity and hopefully, aesthetic pleasure. In a certain way you could call it a political act, how to take disparate things out of their cozy context where they make sense and weave them together into a new unified whole.

In a way American society is a big collage of millions of people finding their place in the big picture. Each one of us is individually responsible to hold up our corner of the country the best we are able. First in our own person, then our own household, then our own neighborhood. These spheres alone are enough to keep each of us busy from morning to night.

As American citizens we also have a larger sphere to consider, our city, our state, our country and our planet. While most of us might feel that the larger the sphere the less we have a say in things, the less we have a responsibility, the less impact the larger spheres have on us. Most of the time this certainly seems true and is true to some extent. But this is where our common ground starts to come into play. These larger spheres are the ground we all stand upon and depend on for our livelihoods, our safety, our peace of mind and our hopes for the future.

We are all deeply intertwined with each other and depend on the good works and the goodwill of all of the other citizens living in their neighborhoods, in their households, and in their individual persons almost all of whom are complete strangers to us. All of us together form the context, the fabric of each one of our individual lives.

Without our goodwill, our regard for our fellow Americans, the fabric of American life starts to fray and weaken. We need to all be trustworthy and trust each other to do our part to keep the American dream alive. We do this in thousands of small actions through the day. We act as Americans in how we respect the daily processes of American life whether we are driving a car, walking down the street, shopping at a local store, how we do our jobs, how we treat our fellow workers or our customers, how we treat those who serve us and those we serve, how we care for our surroundings, how we look after each other, what we say to each other, how we respond in situations, all of these things strengthen or weaken our common ground.

When it comes to our right and duty to vote we need to support those who want to serve all of us, who have the best interest of our common ground American way of life at the center of their agenda. Those politicians who have some other agenda of perhaps self interest or the interest of some interest group need, in order to serve all Americans, acknowledge that their first concern in the best interest of all Americans and the will of the voters. A democracy is a majority rule form of government. If you serve in a democracy you must serve the will of the people.

It seems that many get confused on this topic and want to impose their own view of the world on everyone else. That is just fine. But this is a matter of persuading your fellow Americans through honest debate and argument not through thuggery, intimidation and dishonest, subversive manipulation of the system to bend the vote in a direction that is not reflective of the People’s will. It is a difference between goodwill and ill will. Don’t be ill. Don’t spread illness.