Even In Election Years Honest Conversation Is Necessary

So you expect me to vote for Biden. I respect your opinion. Respect mine. Because real, honest dialog is necessary. Oh, I know, we don’t have time for that now, we have to get Trump out of office. I suggest to you that it has been our inability to engage in real honest conversation for the last few decades that has led to President Trump in the first place. All this knee-jerk reaction we engage in and which is exploited is the reason our country keeps getting crazier and crazier. I’m not going to be manipulated any more, so your only chance of pleading your case to me and others like me is through real, meaningful communication.

Since I am the one writing this and you are at this moment just an imaginary reader inside my head, I’ll go first.

First of all, I want to remind you that moral compromise is easier for some than it is for others. Some people have a very scrupulous conscience, others, not so much. The fact that I am less willing to act when there is no obvious moral path forward does not make me a better person than you, just someone who’s less likely to act. I see the virtue of inaction while you see the virtue in doing anything rather than doing nothing. I’m not always right in my approach, but I’m not always wrong, either. We live in a society where action is overrated.

I just want to make it clear to you what you are asking of me when you ask me to vote for Joe Biden. You are asking of me something that is very contradictory to who I believe myself to be and have always striven to be. I have always viewed myself as one who rejects herd mentality. When the crowd runs in one direction, I have always been one who rejects the urge to follow and instead observes the situation in search of understanding. I’ve never followed trends, never felt the need to get what everyone else is buying or watch what everyone else is watching. I’ve always felt like a necessary balance to group think. I still don’t own a smart phone.

Believe it or not, the push to vote for Biden has appealed to the herd instinct and not the intellect. Hardly unique to Biden of course, but it's an approach I instinctively rebel against. I do not see any real rational argument to be made for how Biden became the Democratic Party presumptive nominee in any legitimate fashion, nor have I heard any serious attempt to explain why Biden was the candidate with the best chance to beat Trump. The fact that we are where we are now is not a sufficient excuse for why we need to stop asking how we got here in the first place.

And that is the essence of my concern over supporting Joe Biden: it requires me to stop being an independent thinker and fall in line with something I find morally repellent and intellectually vacuous. It’s an approach I’ve spent my entire life opposing.

In asking me to throw my support behind Joe Biden, you are asking me to remain silent to the unreality that is the media construct. You are asking me to join a group think and a mindset that I find ugly and stupid.

You ask me to keep silent to the obvious voter rigging that consistently worked against any candidate I was even slightly interested in.

You ask me to keep silent regarding the obvious symptoms of dementia in Joe Biden.

You ask me to keep silent on a million dead Iraqis as a result of a war that Joe Biden supported.

You ask me to keep silent and support in perpetuity a corrupt system that has never offered us anything more than the occasional feel-good victory which in the end has only made things worse.

In short, you ask me to keep silent.

And not me only. You are asking Tara Reade to keep silent. You are asking for silence on any issue that might harm Joe Biden’s chances, and they are many and significant. You ask me to pretend there is no hypocrisy involved when anyone outside the cult can see it clearly. You ask me to join the cult and cut out of my life anyone who does not adhere to the cult’s rules and partake of the kool-aid.

You are asking me to surrender my individuality for the greater good, which in the end is merely the greater good of the cult, which in the end is merely the greater good of the cult’s high priests.

All I want to do is see things as I see them and not have to pretend reality is not as I witness it but as I am told it is. All I want is to be able to speak the truth as I see it, rather than subvert my opinions to the authority of the party.

I don’t think this is too much to ask for. I’m pretty sure even Trump supporters are not asked for such conformity of thought and speech. I am afraid I must do more than simply ask for the right to speak my truth, I must demand it. And not for myself only, I desire and demand that you too speak from your heart and not from a party's platform. This, to my mind, is the only useful way forward. 

Like my writing? Please follow me on Twitter, sign up for my newsletter, or check me out on Amazon. Facebook is no longer a guaranteed way for me to share my thoughts and writing.