The Day After

The Day After
November 8, 2017
By David Perry,

A year ago, I went to bed assured that I would awake to a Democratic President: a woman, a progressive – not him.

I was wrong. I was complacent. We all were. The NY Times (complete with graphics)  told us that “Hillary Clinton has a 90% chance of winning the Presidency!” That wasn’t helpful.

Trump won, and for the last year, sales of antacid tablets soared (as did bar tabs) and many a TV bore the brunt of heel marks from shoes thrown at screens every time “he” appeared. Of course, “he” appeared A LOT. Escaping “him” was impossible.

Until last night.

A year ago, I went to bed cocky, spoiled, entitled, gay-and-legally-married and feeling a bit superior: A Black president, now a woman! Soon, aliens from another planet will come and welcome us into the great kumbaya of extraterrestrial togetherness!

I was wrong. Here on earth, the “elites” and the know-it-all-know-nothings lost to the “just say nos” of the last eight years, or if one goes back to the end of WWII – the last 70. It’s been a bitter pill to swallow…

Until last night.

So, my warning to all my fellow “kvelleres” (look it up) this morning is: don’t get cocky. Allow yourselves that brief moment of rejoicing and move on: vote, get others to vote, and – to quote Ivana Trump in The First Wives Club: “Don’t get angry. Get everything!”

By everything, I mean everything our country represents – imperfectly, but still on paper: optimism, hope, justice. Our more perfect union for over 250 years has been imperfect, with many two-steps-forward and one-step-backwards moments. After last night, I believe – as I did a year ago -- that last year’s election was a one-step-back moment. People fearful of change, and deceived by a charlatan (and an incompetent one at that), elected someone who promised the world and gave them a tweet.

Officially, the Democrats won – bigly – last night, especially in my home state of Virginia. But, this was not a partisan victory. This was an American victory: for American values – real  American values of E Pluribus Unum and the sort of things about which that imperfect, slave-owning Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, wrote.  Last night, a lazy people in several states roused themselves and remembered the sort of country we were created to be – even with our original sin of slavery: an imperfect place of optimism and soaring ideals, not down-in-the-gutter grab ‘em by the privates coarseness.

And so my fellow Americans, over the next year, ask not what your Facebook page can do for you, but rather ask, what can your face-to-face interactions with fellow citizens do for your country? Speak to Trump voters. Try and understand their fears.  Help them remember our country’s better angels and ban the Bannons of the world who sow discord and fear. And, if you cannot convince them – and many, if not most, you will not – do something more important: VOTE VOTE VOTE and take nothing for granted. Otherwise, last night’s brief sweet nocturne will be just that: nothing more than a dream.

David Perry is a native of Richmond, Virginia whose family were immigrants to the Old Dominion in 1620. Having attended the same church and schools as Steve Bannon, he knows a thing or two about the Commonwealth of Virginia.