8/16/2020 Cherishing disagreement
I hope this message finds you well. This week, we've all become aware of the threats to the U.S. Postal Service, how much support it has across so many of our communities, and how necessary it is. The attacks on its capacity are indeed dire, both in terms of impact on those who depend on it for medicine, financial assistance payments, and other essentials; and on all of us in relation to our ability to vote safely and securely, by mail, this fall. I encourage all of us to learn more about the essential nature of the U.S.P.S., its history, its protections in the constitution; and to support it, by contacting our representatives in Congress, and buying stamps and other products. Make sure to vote. Mail-in voting is safe and secure, and there is no evidence that it has ever been, or would be, impacted by widespread fraud.
On a deeper level, the attacks on mail-in voting are a mask for attacks on the notion of the legitimacy of disagreement, of diversity of perspectives. We are seeing this administration and its enablers going all-out to delegitimize every other perspective. Loyalty is their highest value - except, of course, that it only goes one way. Those with lesser power are expected to be unfailingly loyal to those with more power. But as soon as someone with less power is in trouble, those with more power quickly desert them.
Name-calling, demeaning, dismissing, minimizing, demonizing, dehumanizing. These are the rhetorical means of delegitimizing the "other." Democrats are not the opposition party with substantive policy differences: they are socialists, buffoons, losers, enemies. They are after your possessions, your freedoms, your rights. Mail-in voting is not a way to keep people safe: it is an effort to steal the election, a cause of international ridicule. Insofar as Republican leaders parrot these attacks, they are complicit. And, when Democrats simply turn the same rhetorical attacks against Republicans, they are complicit as well.
What we stand for is not the reduction of leadership to a certain set of policies, no matter how important these policies seem to us. We stand for the inclusion of all voices in the determination of those policies. We stand for the recognition that disagreement and diversity of perspectives is a strength. It has kept our democracy from teetering into totalitarianism before. At this point in time, we have to energize it again.
We have faith that the views of exclusion and dehumanization that are abhorrent to us are in the minority. We are not afraid to listen to these views, to explore what lies behind them. We insist on moral and ethical behavior that treats everyone as worthy of understanding and compassion. But we do not insist that everyone thinks alike. In fact, we insist on listening to alternative perspectives in order to deepen our own understanding.
The work ahead calls us. We can mobilize with compassion and understanding, and absolute determination to avoid the temptation to vilify those who think differently than we do. Of all the things we must learn from our history, this might be one of the most important: attempts to obliterate those who are presented to us as "different" will leave us weaker. Embracing multiplicity will make us stronger.
Buy stamps, mail letters, wear a U.S.P.S. hat. And vote. Help others in your circle vote. Drop ballots at your local county auditor's office. Don't worry about who or what they will vote for; just make sure everyone can vote.
Sent, as always, with love and gratitude for your fellowship on this path,
Liz
A good overview of the current U.S.P.S. situation: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/the-wreck-is-in-the-mail/615172/
U.S.P.S. delivered over 142 billion pieces of first-class mail in 2019. https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/
A discussion of the powers of Congress: "The postal powers of Congress embrace all measures necessary to insure the safe and speedy transit and prompt delivery of the mails."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-8/clause-7/postal-power