ManicDDaily

Washington and Cherry Pie

A quick thanks to all who bore with me through this election cycle, and most of all to this country.

I have at times been reticent to post political views on this blog.  There is, of course, the fear of offending people.

But a larger fear has been, well, of getting into some kind of trouble.  Professional, political–you name it–trouble.

Some times that hesitancy may be sensible. But when it’s truly fear – a fear that partisanship is so strong that people on the other side will simply not forgive me or like me or read me, or hire me–then I kind of shiver inside.

Because if people are fearful of writing about their beliefs, it will be very difficult to maintain democracy.  (It will also be very hard to write anything very interesting.)

I’m not saying everyone should go around shouting all the time!  And some forms of speaking out are violent, inflammatory, dishonest and really not very useful, even if legal exercises of first amendment rights.

I suspect that I’ve bordered more on the boring than the inflammatory.  Still, I just want to say – thanks.  To you who agree, and especially to you who disagree.  For reading, commenting, and simply being kind.

And to you whose candidate lost, I really do know how very stinging and sour and awful that feeling is.  All I can ask is that you believe that those on this side are as sincere and well-meaning as you believe yourselves to be.

And to those on my side, come on!  Be gracious.

I’m not sure what George Washington and Cherry Pie have to do with all of this, other than the fact that both, like the right to vote and assemble, write and draw, are things (errr… people and things) for which I am supremely thankful.

PS – Adding this later – It’s not great to gloat, but I also think acrimony will be worsened if people try to deny the victory.  To say for example that it is a narrow popular vote victory is not mathematically or historically true (if one looks at past popular votes)–it’s a victory of millions of votes, far wider than any George W. Bush popular vote victory.  (Of course, Bush lost popular vote in 2000.)