"Vote today and vote joyfully." I admit I have harbored partisan vitriol, though I hope I have the self-knowledge to recognize it for what it is - unworthy - and the self-control to sequester it and refrain from expressing it. Oh, I've passed the equinoctial line on occasion in public. The spouse surely gets an earful now and again, and I can really get rolling when my brother calls and we egg each other on. But a spouse is a spouse, and one of the joys of sibling-hood is the opportunity, even into middle and old age, to figuratively hang out again, eternally ten years old, way up in the branches of the oak tree, smoking purloined Camel cigarettes, completely relaxed in one's opinions and attitudes.

But there is the private self and there is the public self, and the ten year old must be left behind when we venture out into the public square - especially on Election Day, when we should take particular care to be (in the words my daughter uses to describe that which is fitting in dress and behavior) "crisp and correct". To make ourselves worthy to the past and the future, as Orrin Judd outlines in fine post this rainy election morn:

When we go to the polls today we will add one more stone to the long wall that our forefathers built up before us and which our children will certainly keep adding to long after we're gone. It is a privilege that should humble us and for which we must be grateful. It is a trust that's been handed down and that we're obligated to hand on in turn. [...]

No one likes to lose, but to get ourselves crazy over a process that's this natural and of this duration is profoundly unhealthy. We hope and believe that Mr. Bush will win, but have to remain cognizant of the entirely understandable reasons that he might not. As Eric Hoffer put it:

Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.

Mr. Kerry and his supporters are free men as surely as we and we're all in this grope together.

Today is not a day for partisan passion or knots in the stomach, not a day to whip yourself into a frenzy about the nation going to heck in a handcart if your guy loses, but a day to marvel at what we have here, the Republic blessed by Providence and kept by millions of hands and hearts and minds since 1789. Vote today and vote joyfully, for we are a people too favored by fortune to ever take lightly this gift, that we get to be those little men in the little booths making the crosses that determine who gets to represent us.

I am fortunate in that my little corner of the heartland, as far as I've observed, has been untainted by shrillness and nastiness. This is Iowa, after all. I'm not annoyed at all by the barrage of "please vote Kerry" calls I've been getting in the last few days. (Kerry only, oddly. I'm registered as an Independent; I suspect the Bushies have written off the university town I live in.) Not annoyed at all, because the polite, pleasant voices at the end of the line betray no anger or fanaticism, but rather radiate optimism, civic virtue, and faith in the democratic process.

Long live the Republic.

Posted by Moira Breen at November 02, 2004 07:23 AM