It shouldn't have come down to this

It should not have been entirely on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s shoulders to safeguard rights for women, voting rights, gay rights and other principles that so many people hold dear. It should not have come down to strangers hoping this woman would serve the court until she was pushing 90. It should not have come down to strangers playing Monday morning quarterback and scolding her for not retiring when it was more convenient for them and the country. Justice Ginsburg had served her country, remarkably and inimitably, and we should not have had to project onto her the wish that she be immortal.

 

The fate of American principles, on either side of the aisle, should not come down to any one Supreme Court justice. It should not come down to the fickle votes of senators in a body that is divided almost hopelessly in half. None of the decisions that can affect our daily lives should come down to a 5–4 vote or a 51–49 vote.

 

I am tired of the constant feeling of “it all comes down to this”—the feeling that many of the rights and privileges we enjoy as Americans are just a chocolate souffle in the oven, vulnerable to collapsing if a toddler runs through the kitchen. There should be more bedrock in our system than that. Sports analogies are imperfect but it feels like our team screwed around for the first three quarters of the game, caught up in the fourth quarter in a mad dash of scoring, and now the game is tied and the only hope of winning is a 63-yard field goal with 4 seconds left. I’m exhausted with it—not enough to stop fighting, but just exhausted with it constantly happening.

 

I don’t know what the answer to any of it is. There are ways to reform the court, like term limits or each president getting two picks. There is packing the court (which I’m skeptical about because then when the other side is in power, they further pack it and where does that end?).

 

There’s a limit to what anyone can do now but one thing we can all do, which might have averted this feeling of constant razor’s-edge, is to vote. To actually give a fuck before getting to the point of your only hope being that a near-nonagenarian would not die and herald the collapse of our society.

 

One lesson the last four years has taught us is that no matter what side of the aisle you’re on, you should vote every time. They don’t only have elections every fourth November, you know. They have primaries and midterms and state and county and municipal and school board elections, and those little elections may shape the bigger ones. Voting is the most power we have as American citizens. Why else would the government work so hard to suppress it?

 

Mister Rogers used to tell people to “look for the helpers.” This is good advice for kids but when it comes to the perils of democracy, I think some of us adults are looking around for other people to help without realizing that we are the helpers. We are the ones who need to act. Nobody is coming to save us but us.

 

My parents instilled in me the importance of voting and I am very grateful for it. I intend to do the same for my son (and the mini-lectures have already started to much eye rolling). Once I took him with me to vote in a primary and as we were leaving, there was an older woman who cried out in pain with the effort of getting out of a van to go vote (somebody helped her and she said she was fine). I told my son, “If she can vote, we can.”

 

People stand in lines for hours because they know how important their vote is. Unless you’re actually being suppressed, get to that polling place or mail that ballot. No “but both parties are the same.” No “I’m protesting by sitting home because I mistakenly believe the government is like a TV show that they’ll cancel if not enough people watch it.” No “I couldn’t bear to sully my halo by voting for a candidate who is not a completely pure ray of light.”

 

I don’t mean to lecture here because God knows there is more I could do: I could volunteer or march or organize. But I’ve been voting faithfully since four days after I turned 18 (1992 presidential primary). I think I missed one presidential primary and I felt very guilty for it. So I could do more but when it comes to voting, I’ve pretty much maxxed out that power, so forgive me for copping a bit of a ‘tude when it comes to this subject.