“I regard a campaign as a great interruption to the rational consideration of public questions.”

“What difference does it make that you think a thing as a Republican, if it is wrong? What difference does it make if you think a thing as a Democrat, if it is not true? Your being a Republican or a Democrat does not make it true. And what difference does a party make, or a party’s interest make as compared with the interests of the nation itself? . . . 

“I regard a campaign as a great interruption to the rational consideration of public questions.”

—Woodrow Wilson, The New York Times, October 19, 1916

I’ve been arguing with my mother a lot about politics lately (hi, Mom!). And by arguing, I mean swapping polemical internet articles back and forth. I suppose you could say I leaned Republican from the age of 8, when I cast my vote for Bob Dole in the elementary school mock election (I waffled between Dole and Clinton because one of my parents was voting for each, though I don’t remember the distribution). And then I went to a the-Republican-Party-is God’s-party church during my formative years, and then I read the Wall Street Journal every day right after I finished my daily Bible chapter. And then I went to college, and I realized it wasn’t serendipitous that there was a national political party that just happened to align with all of my views.

For whatever reason, elections have been for me what large national sporting events are, I imagine, for other people. I was never quite the ideal partisan (despite my waxing and waning allegiances, I was and am registered as independent), but I did and still do love following the coverage and dissecting the narratives. I suppose I shouldn’t look at “the future of our country” as a colossal game, but I’m privileged and ensconced, and I do. Part of me does, anyway. Maybe that’s the if-you-don’t-laugh-you’ll-cry part of me, or the part of me that retreats when large and sad things are happening, when that one girl breaks down in the middle of worship service at summer camp and all of the other girls surround her with hugs and comfort, when the country is stunned and launched into mourning by a national tragedy and I’m mortified by my lack of response.

I can blame that part of me on temperament, but it’s more fun to blame it on culture. The most damaging aspect of my adolescent Christianity-Republican Party hybrid was the utter callousness it permitted. The Republican Party callousness, of course, is the bootstraps/personal responsibility narrative: that everyone is responsible for him/herself;  that anyone can be prosperous with a strong work ethic; that poor people deserve their poverty for their own moral failings; that a government with vast resources is not responsible for the well-being of its citizens; that the rich should be rewarded for their position, for it indicates their superior character and judgment; that war is necessary and noble, despite how many people die needlessly; that the free market leads to good for all, despite the mechanism of greed that perpetuates it; that structural economic adjustments that impoverish people are just part of life. The Christianity callousness was linked to these ideals, but it offered on its own a strange logic that let me answer a guy, who asked me whether I believed all of the people who never hear the gospel in the version our church dictated it were going straight to hell, with an unequivocal “Yes.” (Of course, I realized the callousness at the time, but I thought doctrinal purity meant I could answer no other way, and I secretly hoped the harshness of my response would make this particular guy stop liking me. He was weird.)

One of my most gratifying college experiences was the gradual realization that I could be a pacifist. Not only that, I could stop believing that poor people were dirty and deserving. I could stop believing that the death penalty was the best way to scare people into not killing other people. I could stop believing that everyone should have a gun, and the more guns, the less violence. I could stop believing that people who flee the structural oppression, poverty, and violence of their home countries should be summarily shipped back there even though they’d rather live in relative squalor here. I could stop believing that people who wanted health care could just get a job that offered them health care. I could stop believing that there was such a thing as a free market, and that it worked in everyone’s favor. I was allowed to be compassionate, because there were intelligent and Christian people who used a logic that the Republican Party didn’t.

Honestly, the freedom to be compassionate fundamentally changed me. You can ask Daniel. I actually tear up occasionally when I see something upsetting. I’m not a Democrat Party hack. Along with my realization of the contradictions of the modern conservative position came arguments that perhaps there are issues with the entire political structure down to its foundation. I am persuaded by those arguments. But I believe in better and worse, and while I don’t think either candidate in the present election would do much of anything to change politics as usual if elected, I do think perception makes a difference.

I’m doing a lot of projecting here. But just like with Sarah Palin in 2008, I like Barack and Michelle because I see myself in them. I see myself in their reserved, knowing smiles, in their intellectual sadness when basic ideals like health care and fair tax rates are shredded to pieces by the public. I can imagine a more civically minded Daniel and a more hard-edged me meeting as young lawyers. I can imagine that hard-edged me recognizing something in Daniel that meant we needed to pursue political office. I can imagine that hard-edged me recognizing that while the country might not be ready for a black woman, it might countenance a black man. And, just like with Sarah Palin, I might be foisting an idealized version of myself onto carefully crafted political personas that don’t exist. But the perception domestically that we are a country that doesn’t just reward rich white men for being rich and white, and the perception abroad that a man who avoids blustery jingoism and whose last name is one letter off from the first name of the terrorist his administration killed is the man we want in office, is a good perception.

I don’t know if the system is so flawed that it’s nearly impossible to get good things done. I don’t know if we should even try; I haven’t figured out yet whether my eschatology dictates a book-of-Revelation, pessimistic, imminent return disengagement, or a book-of-Daniel brand of optimistic, involved, intentional engagement, or even some other option I haven’t conceptualized, let alone considered. I should really sit down and hammer those out. But I do know that it is good for people to have health care. It is good to consider the poor as people to be helped. It is good to avoid killing people. And it is good for me to have the intellectual space to hold these beliefs.

Things I made this summer.

This has nothing to do with Ann Arbor, but I need to link my pins somewhere, don’t I? I crocheted a little this summer in between hanging out with everyone we hadn’t seen for nine months and working on the living room floor in our apartment in San Diego because why would we scrounge around for a table and chairs if we’re only living there for four months? Now, of course, I’m addicted to working on the floor and probably spend 80 percent of my workday sprawled out next to a perfectly functional futon, desk, and kitchen table (we have a kitchen table! That may or may not get its own blog post in the near future).

For my mom’s birthday, I decided she would be forced into accepting one of my handmade treasures. I thought a beach tote would be appropriate, as my parents are intent on becoming OC people, which is fine by me, because I love a good beach city as much as the next person, but I will mourn the transition out of our dear Inland Empire home of 12 years if and when it happens (I don’t care how impoverished the Valley is becoming; there’s nothing like those mountains, and our little tract home is absolutely adorable without four teenagers living in it).

Of course, I had yarn left over, and Daniel and I had a lot of “Mad Men,” “Community,” and “Suits” to watch (and by a lot, I mean the all of the seasons of all of those shows. And we still hung out with people, I swear). So I attempted this insane-looking potholder pattern. Mom got that one, too. It didn’t come out exactly like it should have, but it’s still interesting to look at. Note also my little plants in the background; I kept basil, lavender, and a couple of snapdragons alive all summer. Now we live half-underground and have no natural sunlight (it’s not quite as bad as it sounds), so an Ann Arbor herb garden may not be so feasible.

And there was yet more yarn, so another potholder needed to be made. It took me about three times of practically crocheting the entire thing to figure this one out, but I did it, by golly.

And the last few scraps went into some African flower coasters. Happily, I realized, they are reasonable facsimiles of the U of M maize and blue, so they are exceedingly appropriate in our Ann Arbor apartment. I am so good at this grad school wife thing.