Keep calm, and vote on

Good morning from Capitol Hill in Washington. Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to Civic Texts sonce my last message. I expect this won’t be the last time you hear from me today.

It’s Election Day here in the United States. You may have heard about it on the news! I was reminded when I logged into social media — as if I’d forget.

But it was good to see the nudge and know other people would be reminded to cast their ballots.

🇺🇸 🗳️ Every American social network run by patriots should do this, all day. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

There is an unlikely timeline where tonight ends early, instead of the dark of night. we awake to a new dawn in America, followed by an American spring like no other.

The next week could be a surreal rush of history as a young, pluralistic multiracial democracy that just collectively turned the page on one of the last century’s worst ideas and expiring leaders is revived and renewed by a new generation of leaders, teachers, and healers, finally realizing the promise of our original civic creed: out of many, one.

It may be wiser for many of us steel ourselves to be bitterly disappointed. We may need to prepare for far worse to come, in a return to an older, darker version of our republic where unequal justice and unequal rights remain the lived reality in marginalized communities across our union. (The Starks are always right, eventually: “Winter is coming.”)

Either way, I judge it best to resolve to be resilient in the face of uncertainty, doubt, and fear today, with the prospect of over months of litigation and increasing threats and danger.

Nonetheless, the hope I had upon waking and surveying the political landscape in the United States of America on Election Day felt worth putting down and share — just in case the moral universe is listening and wants to stretch before the end of a race like none other in our history.

Patience will be a good watchword today: it takes a while to count votes across our immense nation of fifty states, DC, & territories.

So put some tea on, keep calm, and carry on.

(I started with strong coffee today and expect to shift to green tea after noon. TBD how tonight goes.)