One and Only Observer

Before daylight, at the Detroit Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS) in Troy, Michigan, I was standing in line. This morning wasn’t just signing all the papers that the staff sergeant recruiter put in front of me and my parents the year before. I’d ridden a bus through the dark from Howell with a bunch of strangers. After a long series of medical exams, I found myself standing in a large room with other young people, my right hand raised, repeating the words, “I, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic….”

I worried that my oath might be a serious commitment, but then, I felt consoled by the fact that I was willing to defend my side—my nation—against foreign enemies. I was eighteen. It was 1985, and the Cold War between the US and the USSR was real. Months later, I was stationed in Germany setting long-range artillery firing points in the Fulda Gap.

This cool October morning, decades later, I entered the City-County Building on Chapline Street in Wheeling, West Virginia. After going through the metal detector and collecting the contents of my pockets from a leather bowl, I waited in line, got my ballot, and found myself in a voting booth constructed of PVC pipe and curtains, using a pencil eraser to make my choices on the display screen.

Between the two mornings, I served twelve years in the military, lived in three countries and six states, raised two sons, was married for twenty years, and worked as a self-employed contractor for the past two decades.

I never dreamed I’d be a civilian, middle-aged American man, “supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States,” against a domestic enemy. A “domestic enemy” was what there was during the Civil War and the American Revolution. After these past nine years, though, an ever-ratcheting-up of utterances and actions by the party leader I wasn’t voting for have made these two words real.

In West Virginia, I’m confronted with the fact that many of my fellow teammates have aligned themselves with a caricature that walks and quacks like an autocrat. It baffles me, even though it shouldn’t because my fellow Americans have been shouting, increasingly loudly, in all caps, just like their leader. I just can’t relate to what they’re shouting.

Although they seem to think that they’re fighting for their country, their country doesn’t sound like mine. They seem to hate a lot of different types of people, like their long-red-tie-wearing leader.

The American Way, in my book, is about solving problems, getting things done, and reaching goals. Improving things that need improving. Not endlessly complaining.

Like writing these essays that I’ve been posting here, or raising my sons, or doing my best work for other people, I’m doing what I can. This morning I voted.

In writing these ‘essays,’ I’m urging one other person in my life to vote blue this election. Someone who wasn’t going to vote either through disinterest or apathy. I thought I had a chance of being able to do that.

I wrote essays on themes relevant to what I feel is at stake in this election, posting them on my Facebook page and WordPress writing blog site. I contributed small amounts to the blue campaign. I talked to people I met, urging them to find one person in their lives who wasn’t going to vote…. I did what I could, using what I had, where I was.

I believe in America. It’s my team, after all. I hope you vote, too.