The Enemy Within the Mirror

With the election less than two weeks away, I’m proud to be on record with my vehement endorsement of Kamala Harris. I’m not the only American using quality time with my therapist to discuss "election anxiety”: 73% of Americans in the 2024 election are there with me, so many that “election anxiety disorder” exists now from severe stress and extreme dismay about the potential outcome.

Probably most annoying, as someone who’s watched every single town hall, debate, and interview on every network, is the slice of “undecided” voters, even as recently as this week’s CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper where Trump was a no-show because he’s so incoherent at this point that his handlers won’t let him out of close range.

You’re undecided, or you just like attention? You “don’t know enough about” Harris, or you’re fine with a fascist being elected and because of your internalized systemic racism and/or sexism? You “don’t like either candidate,” or you’re going to throw your vote away and watch a Hitler junkie get elected because you’re some kind of rebel. You’re going to “sit this one out” and stand the chance of a convicted criminal getting elected who will “let the states decide” if women will continue to die while trying to get medical care? You care about the cost of groceries and you think the President chooses them so you're going to elect an adjudicated rapist? 

I had three miscarriages between my second and third children. After I lost the third pregnancy, I found out I had only a 50/50 chance of having kids. When I got the devastating news that there was no longer a heartbeat, and had to go to the hospital for a D&C (the same procedure as an abortion), the anesthesiologist walked in and had the audacity to ask me if I wanted counseling for “other options.” I said other options for what. Apparently he was under the impression I was having an abortion. Tears running down my face, all I could do was tell him the baby was already dead. In that moment, I shouldn’t have had to explain that. Why? Because my body and what goes on inside it is nobody’s business but mine. When Tim Walz said, “Mind your own damn business,” it resonated because that’s the moment I immediately recalled. If my seven pregnancies had occurred today in a state with an abortion ban, I wouldn't have even been able to safely get those procedures for the three I lost, which would have endangered my chances of going on to have my other two children.

Sometimes, it isn’t a matter of being pro-life or pro-choice. I say this as a mother of four, lifelong Catholic and as someone who can see how Liz Cheney is choosing country over party in supporting Harris. Two things can be true at the same time. You can believe life begins at conception and you can also believe, as I do, that it’s none of your business what another woman does with her body. It’s never the business of the government, and it’s true that no woman should ever have her health endangered being forced to seek medical care in another state. You want to be pro-life? Be pro-life for women. Without us, you don't get the babies. See how that works?

Having watched a powerful trifecta of films in trying to understand Trump and the magnetism of his cult (Unfit, Bad Faith, and From Russia With Lev), I think one of the things that fuels MAGA in addition to the Christian Nationalism power wherein church has sadly been cataclysmically confused with state, is this idea of the false underdog. It’s been shown in studies that Trump supporters embrace an ideal of “systemic egocentric victimhood”; researchers found that these individuals “tended to be less emotionally stable, more narcissistic, more conspiratorial, and more distrustful of government.”

Check out the Wikipedia page and whoever’s job it is to manage the 43 sub-categories and thousands of Harris endorsements (from former president, elected officials and the vast majority of Trump's former team to hundreds of celebrities, artists and athletes) compared to Trump’s scant endorsement list. The people are already using their voices to speak. Why not make it the third time he didn't win the popular vote: a full baseball strikeout.

I want to believe that the swing has already swung, that undecided voters are making the only intelligent choice, democracy versus authoritarianism and fascism, and that things will be okay in America’s nearly-250 year old tradition of democracy.