The Undertow in a Fraught Election

November 5, 2024

You see the glistening Pacific and take its invitation, swimming into the waters’ embrace. But before you realize, the ground below has steepened more sharply than anticipated. You look over your shoulder and the shore is too distant. You must work, use residual strength, to swim in haste back to a shallower depth of safety.

One surmounts a rising terror with rational and determined action. Or drowns.

That is the story of my morning. I had thought when election day finally came, I would eagerly go to the polls and give it my all. After the wait of four years in which neither my candidate, nor I, conceded in a suspect plebiscite. Such a long wait it had been.

That morning four years ago was glorious. The Creator had painted the sky itself in the gentlest dazzling pastels. Scanning across it, one corner was a subtle peach with a sun lite streak, then an expanse of baby blue, finally a delicate pink as the sun fully rose. I had the thrill of the joint citizen action as we progressed in unity to the sublime civic act of the vote. Arriving home, I scribbled an essay to mark the brilliant moment.

Only later as Arizona was called early the same evening did euphoria burn into horror and outrage. Admonished for weeks, I did not concede but stood with my candidate in solidarity.

And today? The sky was a dismal flat gray, a November blank. I had so little of the enthusiasm I had imagined. Indeed, I was noting tight threads of anxiety, arising from nowhere with alarms tying my hopeful spirit. I voted, muted spirit.

I began a discussion with myself. Was I literally depressed? Seemed almost so. How could it be? I am a survivor who cured myself of depression thirty years ago and I don’t get depressed. What was I going to do if the election itself drove me to request Ritalin? How could I score a powerful drug as a by-the-book, law and order, solid citizen? Ok, ok, one candidate on the ticket can have her refreshment, but it’s not a course open to me.

The analysis continued. Why was I so flattened? Why surrender desire to inaction? My wait of four years had taken a toll. In succession, I was a domestic terrorist, not educated, stupid, a traitor, a terrorist, a liar, a Nazi, Hitler, pathetic, obscene, ignorant of law, garbage, and wrong. I was called it all by my country’s leaders, my loved ones, and my friends. It did not relent, it grew worse and frantic.

I was so called in front of my young, witnessing child.

I held up. My chin was high, my spirit indomitable. I used strength to add strength and to uplift, to give productively where I could. But it wore on me.

Close to nothing can weary a person as much as a spouse taking the opposed side and entrenching himself thoroughly in its perspective. He reached a level of admirable obstinacy.

Alas, since 1-6, I had no recourse but to listen to disparagement of my candidate, cast fictively as a prisoner headed to Gitmo internment. After a mere four months, I exploded with a statement. Were President Trump to be slammed behind bars, I would pack my suitcase to offer myself in his place at the prison gate. Or demand an adjoining cell, with pencil and paper. It was a dialogue we continued over the four year gap.

Prof. Robert P. George the weekend prior to the vote encouraged all to not allow their political persuasions to deter us from the love and respect we have for our dear relatives and friends. He reminded us with Lincoln’s appeal,

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” (President Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address)

I quipped in a response Professor George liked,

“Well, I’m friends with my husband and he’s been telling me since 1-6 that my candidate is going to Gitmo. I stay friends, though it’s kind of a drag, sometimes. But whatcha’ ya gonna’ do? Laugh and keep your chin up.” (X)

I thought I had managed it. Over four years the emotions had ranged from outrage, disgust, horror, fatalism, acceptance, curiosity, quietism, and humor. The full range of human emotion. I was steady enough to explore perspectives widely.

I held fast to underlying commitments of my political vision. Even in the acid of near to no uplift for any of my thought. But I am actually angry not to jump into the fray of public disputation and enjoy myself plunging into that deep water.

This morning it brought me to a standstill. What should have been fun was not. I almost tumbled head first into the dark void of limitless despair, of the tow of icy water before I could reach the embracing shore. I almost became depressed. But then I wrote this solace.

The day is long. My candidate has done the noble thing of drawing with him fine men and women. Our country is at the horizon of libertarian advance unlike anything in my lifetime. The opportunity and need for restoration of the American founding is seen by visionaries, even to the unique epistemology of American advance. The Youth, even foreign Youth, are robust and primed to hold onto, to respect, the precious vision of America. The American Dream lives.

The election has wrought more souls than mine. Together we will stumble or glide into the future. I will be strong and joyous in that shared future.

Natalie Gandhi, Copyright, Nov 5, 2024.