At the end of the day, the sun checked out and the moon checked in for the night shift, barely leaving enough time for the sky to change the sheets and fluff the purple pillows. As the light fell, I thought about all the darkening in our nation and I let it seep into my spirit. How can we survive the next couple of weeks and whatever comes beyond? But then I thought, the moon is there like a placeholder to remind us that the sun will be back tomorrow.

The sun will rise with exponential light and a warmth that the cold moon lacks. We are, after all, a single species, same needs, same wants. Can our roads to the same destination be so different? Beyond politics, what are our actual differences?

Age? For sure, but it’s built-in and always has been. The young believe they invented everything and mistake their first encounters with radical ideas as a discovery of brilliant answers. The old recognize those youthful mistakes with a little nostalgia for their own rebellions but do not trust radical change.

Race, then? Piffle. Our true differences are barely skin deep when we stop reinforcing the horrors of history and separate its ongoing pretexts from real racism where it exists. Looting, rioting and arson merely feed inherited biases and stereotypes. They are utterly counterproductive. The negative legacies of the human heart that are being fueled by them will only disappear when the negative actions die of starvation.

Economics? Yes, but the unhappiness/happiness associated with economics are relative to a time and place. Who would give up the benefits of modern medicine and technologies to be royalty before electricity, central air, modern plumbing, cars, phones, computers etc?

What about sexual orientation? Of course. Another built-in. The pure archetypes of male and female go a long way toward explaining political differences. But virtually no one is pure male or female when you get beyond physical biology to the intricacies of the mind. That said, of all our differences, this may be the one to explore in order to understand what’s ahead.

Two of the most misleading gender clichés are that women talk, men do; and men think, women feel. Something there to insult everybody. The clichés make it sound like it’s all one set of traits or the other. If you love those insinuations, congratulations, you’re the first human ever born who doesn’t have both emotions and logic. We are each of us some balance or imbalance of feeling and thought. Many of our caricatures of each gender reflect those proportions and the different approaches to problem-solving and a view of the world.

Whatever your gender, what do you prioritize? What does intuition mean? What does logic mean? Does your mental reflex tell you this is alarming or intriguing…or both?

It isn’t as simple as just chromosomes. Your inner man or inner woman understands this. You probably sense that you usually identify with your gender stereotype or, conversely, that you tend to relate to your opposite gender more than your own biological stereotype. Using myself as an example, I tend toward reason before emotion (because if you don’t protect against the leaping lion, you’re not around to feel love for the lamb), and so I most often relate to women who confide that they tend to “think like a man” or don’t like the “cattiness of certain women.” But I also know many men who “think like a woman” and network emotionally. And, of course, those women who say disparagingly that men just don’t get it or lack depth and subtlety are citing the unfeeling bluntness of “practical men.” To them, even if the male approach to problem-solving gets results, it may be crude, rude and uncaring and they may prioritize that.

Are the proportions of reason and emotion in each of us reflected in the battle of ideologies? While neither party would accept a picture of themselves devoid of what the other party claims to stand for, Democrats banner themselves as the party of caring and compassion through more government, while Republicans see themselves as practical and effective through less government. The broad antagonisms are clear. Democrats see Republicans as greedy winners of life’s lottery, bigoted and blind to human suffering. Republicans see Democrats as having low expectations of people and empowering themselves through dependencies that enable the worst and the least in human nature.

If you look at the historical voting record, Democrat and Republican divisions align remarkably with gender models. Percentages vary, and are complicated by other demographics such as race, but the generality over time yields a pattern. Simplistically and very generally put, the rough averages are that 45% of men and 55% of women will vote for a Democratic presidential candidate, while 45% of women and 55% of men will vote Republican.

Age, race, economics, gender – to return to my question about what are our differences, each in itself could be determinant in the upcoming election, but the gender divide may be more pivotal than in the past. The 55-45 split in either direction seems to be changing, though each party has a different take on just how. Democrats believe their 55% edge with women is because females naturally incline toward more government, that their perceptions of social injustice are an appeal for a central authority to move towards socialism in order to heal from violence. Republicans believe that their 45% are independent women who reject the idea that they need to be “kept” by a patriarchal government, that they want more opportunity and freedom for self-determination. Whoever is right, the separate party platforms are in place and unyielding.

Democrats see the November election as a mandate for updating America’s egregious past to become fairer and more inclusive. Their view is that flawed Constitutional principles permitted white people to succeed disproportionately and must be revised in order to give Democratic leadership another shot at addressing slavery, crime, immigration and poverty, as well as economic and educational gaps. They know that the election is an opportunity to solidify a permanent more socialist model for America. If the Presidency and Congress are won, Democrats see a path to a one-party permanent lock on power through amnesty and voting rights for undocumented immigrants, liberalized Federal voting laws, banning voter ID, expanding the Senate to include new states in liberal areas like California, adding other new states and jurisdictions such as Washington DC and Puerto Rico, passing a Federal law allowing felons to vote, following San Francisco’s proposal to lower the voting age to 16, packing the Supreme Court to 12 justices, a Federal law to make mail-in voting permanent, and neutering geographical representation across the country by replacing the electoral college with a popular vote – effectively handing future elections over to a few densely populated cities and their politicians. These and other changes would permanently ensure an insurmountable Democrat Party voting bloc.

The Republicans see it differently, of course. Their view is that the last four years have largely reversed the previous eight years of Biden/Obama apologizing to the world and telling America it was unworthy of its successes, that its constitutional premises were corrupt, its successes undeserved, that a diminished economy of never more than 2% GDP growth “is the new normal” and that our manufacturing jobs were going overseas and “ain’t coming back.” Republicans do not believe that the 700 billion-dollar cost of expanding Medicare will be paid for by making all records digital, as the Biden-Obama administration said, and they do believe it will ration healthcare to people over 55 and produce long waits for everyone. They fear that Democrats are building a permanent underclass of dependents to keep them in power, similar to their hold on black voters for the last few decades. The Trump base sees their mandate as a continuance of an incentive-based free-market America against an entrenched Democrat-media complex allied with disgruntled Old Guard politicians of both parties from the Swamp. They view themselves as the last line of defense against socialist-Marxist anti-capitalists who will use any means to destroy attempts to limit government. Where Republicans see a meritocracy, they also see Democrats calling Republicans out for daring to think they can make it on hard work and individual ability without it being given them through the collective. They believe that if Democrats sweep their increasingly socialist agenda into power this time, elections will become little more than rubber stamps not unlike those in Russia, China and Cuba.

Me, I’ve never really understood blind party loyalty. Makes even less sense if you know the history of each party and how their historical positions on issues have frequently reversed. If you take away party postures and just look at what they initiated and supported decade by decade, you’d likely guess wrong as to which started or ended wars, which supported or opposed the major constitutional amendments about race and rights as well as other landmark legislation. Similarly, the ugliness of debates stands apart from what I look for in a President who must deal with the ugliness of the world and negotiate its competitiveness rather than debate it. We all prefer civil protocols when they aren’t simply a façade that controls communication and manipulates information as the media does today. David “tweeting” against Goliath, aided by besieged social media outposts, reminds me of our war for independence when the American Minutemen, vastly outnumbered by the self-righteous British arrays, picked them off from behind trees and fences. The British marched into battle in formal lines because they controlled the numbers and the weapons and so deemed it the proper way to fight. The Americans were ugly and uncivil. But nowhere in the world do you see combatants marching in formal lines these days. 

So, given the implicit hypocrisy and human frailty across the board in politics, I look at the tenor of our times and ask myself which candidate is a better fit for this point in history. I don’t want an election to be a reality show where I empathize with a personality. Neither is my vote a Valentine or a popularity choice in a 7^th grade election. It is my single selection for freedom, prosperity and safety for me and my loved ones. I wish the same for you.

Photos below of where I go for healing.

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan