Jaw-forward and razor-sharp teeth bared, I can hold my head high, for reasons that matter to me, for never having voted for the President-elect.
Some of the reasons for my “no vote” for 45/47 may overlap with why you didn’t vote for him.
Likely, some of my reasons don’t align with your reasons, and that’s okay.
I cut my teeth in the 80s, what may as well have been the Jurassic, in the era of Reagan (the GOAT) and Bush (H.W., the first) and Tip O’Neill (the jolly aisle-crosser) and the Iron Curtain behind whom all of our political wizards pulled the levers of power. My worldview was one of compassionate conservatism, NATO, American leadership in the world and an age-appropriately insular perspective on the AIDS crisis.
I was a pre-pubescent Republican cold-warrior, swaddled in red, white, and blue, a naïve fan-boy: a believer in big ideas and larger-than-life personalities to make those ideas reality. My reverence and respect for these men guided young-me into adolescence and then, just like that, to 50-year-old me: now politically scraped up, black and blue.
Like many of his current rabid supporters who likely couldn’t pick the above-20th century political game-changers out in a lineup, I was completely oblivious, at that time in my life, as to whom Donald Trump was or what lineups he would eventually headline.
Just like in November 2020 and January 2021, and every November and January in four-year increments for the prior two -score years, I’ve been a rabid defender and “cult”-like believer in the Constitution, rule of law, and the ever-expanding promise of America as the “city upon a hill.”
P(elect)OTUS47 tapped into many of those same themes, though from an odd-to-me end-around, rhetoric, and prescription that are — amplifiedly — unarguably discomfiting. His populist approach does not align well in any way with the “compassionate” conservatism of my youth. Admittedly, neither do all of the issues, technologies or voices. This is a different America, an indistinguishable Republican Party, and a small-world climate where political ideas are deep-faked in an amusement park without the security to keep the innocent, fore-fatherless, petri-dish-cloned monsters corralled.
I did not leave the Republican Party, the Party has left me.
If only the lambs were all Dollies the sheep.
If only all the snowflakes were truly one of a kind.
Oh, I know. The left-side foils to my (by today’s standards) milquetoast conservatism has morphed as well. Even as my party has left me behind I commiserate with my 80s-Left friends who’ve been similarly left without a home in the era of ultra-progressivism and the divisive pandering that it invites.
If only I were not a Republican In Name Only.
Oh, I know. I’m the one who’s out of step, clinging to a nostalgic America that was hit by a meteor in the middle of Obama’s (God love him) presidency. Looking back, though, objectively, there was stardust accruing all along.
Trump was not that meteor, but rather was a passenger upon it. Sadly, I’m a RINOsaur, roaming and scavenging the transformed civic landscape for scraps and companionship.
Thus, I have two options: 1. Use my tiny T-Rex arms to reach out to the other survivors of the cataclysm and forge alliances with the long-necked Brontos and tough-puffed Stegos. Or 2. Use my ferocious jaw to rip them apart and feast on their blood until I die, alone, the last of my kind.
Surely, there is brash, Libertarian romanticism inherent in number two. Right is right, after all. But really? Number two, even a toddler knows, is “dooty.”
45/47’s supporters aren’t the meteor. In many cases, they aren’t even the extraterrestrial passengers on that meteor. They are creatures who, just like me, have adapted to the new reality created by the meteor.
Despite my self-anointed status of Rex, my post-Jurassic cohabitants have chosen a different set of leaders— created and forged— by the heat of the new atmosphere. So I choose option one above.
I still have a voice — a shrieking roar, you may identify — and will continue to use it. However, I will not rip my competitors to pieces, because I get that they have a purpose in our concomitant survival.
I continue to dwell, among a cacophony of voices, roars and shrieks.
I invite my fellow Ts, my fellow RINOsaurs, to stay the course, but to not fall prey to self-aggrandizing arrogance. Nor can any of us stomach the saccharin conciliation knowing the scorched-earth-blood-lust with which the game was fought.
To the Brontos and Stegos, I may not like your ideas or your leaders, but I recognize that this is the system that you, with the numbers, have controlled and will continue to as we clean up from the meteor.
I continue to believe in the Constitution, rule of law, and America’s “city upon a hill”-dom.
I continue to believe that progressivism and populism — unfocused bullies, taken together — will flame out as they are not sustainable from the top or bottom of a fossil fuel reserve in the real-time-making.
The history of our world pre-dates — by billions — my two and a half score upon it, and the history of our nation has survived “as bad if not differently worse.”
Real-time reporting lacks the objectivity of history. Paleontology lacks the emotion of real-time. What we write here, at this juncture will be data points for future poets, leaders and historians.
Meanwhile, I’ll use my little arms to reach out and I’ll roar a little less shriekingly; I’ll point the leaders, those in power and those among the mighty minority, toward sincere conciliation.
I’ll continue to use my little arms to not vote for “him.” I’ll continue to use my little arms to essay, genuinely and sentimentally, for you.
And of course, I’ll continue to offer my little-armed hugs with a kiss of cane sugary gloss to whomever wants or needs them.
Jason Leclerc (@JLeclercAuthor) is an essayist, poet, economist, and author of two published collections, “Momentitiousness” and “Black Kettle.” He shares his work online at PoetEconomist.Blogspot.com.
Watermark reached out to other LGBTQ+ and ally voices across Central Florida and Tampa Bay who asserted the community is “Not Helpless. Not Alone.” Read more here.
