Editorial – Deep Left Field

I am a proud girl dad, and my daughter, Karina, is the light of my life.

It hasn’t been easy raising a child as a single father, and I still mourn the loss of Karina’s mother in a car accident when my little girl was only 2 years old.

Karina is now 16 and heading to college in less than two years. There, she plans to pursue a degree in veterinary science.

But after Donald Trump’s unexpected win last night in the presidential election, I’m struggling with questions Karina has already begun asking me this morning: What happened? Why didn’t Kamala Harris win? Can women ever hope to achieve the highest office in the United States? Do the majority of Americans consider women to be second-class citizens?

Looking at the returns from last night, including the Senate races in many states, it’s clear that fear and anger are now ascendant in this country. It’s politically beneficial to scapegoat others: People of color, people from other nations who have come to this country to seek a better life for their families, and members of the LGBTQ community.

It’s also clear that the majority of Americans seem to think that if you happen to be female, you can’t be trusted with issues of economics, foreign policy, and national security. For those complex issues, we have to elect a convicted rapist and sexual predator who has openly lusted after his daughter when she was only 13 years old simply because he’s male and good at lying with a straight face.

What the fuck, America?! Do we need to learn the same lesson about the dangers of electing incompetent leaders yet again? The last time we did, it cost us over a million of our fellow citizens while Trump mused about injecting bleach and using light “inside” our bodies to cure a deadly respiratory pandemic.

This is a very dark day in our nation’s history. But it won’t end us. We’re too strong for that. Millions of us have only just begun to resist and prepare for the next election, which is now less than two years away.

Karina and millions of girls just like her can count on one thing if nothing else in these uncertain times: You are more than capable of accomplishing all of your dreams, and one day that will include watching as a woman raises her right hand on Inauguration Day and becomes president of the United States. Tens of millions of girl dads won’t stop fighting until that becomes a reality.

Here’s a hypothetical question for us all to consider as we sit and watch election returns later this evening: What would the men who created our form of self-governance think if they could tell us their thoughts on the state of this country in 2024?

They’d probably be shocked by how badly divided we are as a nation, but then again, many in the fledgling United States circa 1776 thought it would be a disaster for us to seek our independence from Great Britain.

But in the end, the logic and reason of men such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison won out, making it clear that we could only go forward, not retreat into the way things were just because such a path was easier to predict and less fraught with uncertainty.

So here we are, 248 years after the Declaration of Independence created this nation, eventually making us “the indispensable” country across the globe, a beacon of freedom and hope while at the same time being a nation rife with hatred, racism, and xenophobia.

The most basic question of the 2024 election is this one: Will we choose fascism or freedom?

Fascism, it should be noted, is defined as “a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition.”

Take a good look at that definition. Does it sound like anything the men who created this republic would in favor of seeing take hold? They had just broken away from England and it’s tyrannical king because he had his foot on the colonies and refused to listen to their pleas for fairness and a modicum of freedom.

Freedom is a word that means many things to many people. It is technically defined this way:

“The power or right to speak, act and change as one wants without hindrance or restraint. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of ‘giving oneself one’s own laws.'”^]

Now consider the two candidates seeking the White House in this election cycle, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Which one best represents the ideals of freedom and which one has verbally expressed a desire to set the nation on a course of fascism?

Some suggest that calling 2024 the most important election in American history is a ridiculous exaggeration But is it? After all, one party seeks to impose restrictions on the decisions women make about their own bodies, which in many ways is the most fundamental freedom of all.

Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it is also incredibly fragile, as Benjamin Franklin reminded us when he was asked what form of government the new nation would have.

“A Republic, if you can keep it,” Franklin told a woman who inquired.

We can keep it. We have kept it for nearly 250 years and we stand at yet another inflection point in our history. Harris represents freedom while Trump promises fascism. But at the end of the day, the choice is ours, and we’d be wise to continue on the path of freedom or watch as this nation devolves into chaos, hatred, and dictatorial rule.