Big Daddy

Living in the condo below us on Beacon Hill was a middle-aged
Republican who came back to Boston (from Florida where he cared for his elderly mother) to run for state rep whenever our seat was up for grabs.  He thought that no one should run unapposed, as most seats in Massachusetts were, because everyone in Boston was Democrat. So every couple of years we tripped over his placards in the hall and enjoyed the live piano concert coming up through the floor, and after the election he tipped his pork pie hat to us, wrapped a scarf over his bow tie and flagged a cab to Logan. I was working in a big insurance company and our CEO was also a bow tie Republican lawyer from a big downtown firm who found out I was a writer and kindly connected me to someone in his firm for some gratis advice. The CEO had a policy of hiring as many employees as he could who lived in the city because our building was an extra wide tax free footprint in the middle of the financial district.  Despite our heavily subsidized cafeteria, some employees still stuffed their pockets with extra food "for later" and when these employees were taken to HR to be fired the CEO intervened and said "I will not fire people for stealing food. We are not that kind of company, we are not that kind of people."

I am worried that my fellow liberals are thinking that because Republicans are in power--in no small part because of liberal inertia--that bad things are going to happen to us. I am saying that in the most important ways, nothing has changed and we don't have to wait for permission to act like patriotic freedom loving Americans.  I still have the power to intervene when I witness the powerful beating up the powerless. I still have the power to advocate for the rights of my fellow humans--not because I am "tolerant" (a concept I detest as if the exercise of someone's rights is dependent on my largesse)--but because when one of my fellows is denied his rights it's a CRIMINAL ACT.

Yes, it's SAD that the person occupying the big bully pulpit doesn't consider it his job to advocate for the rights of all Americans, or, as far as I can tell, anyone's rights besides his own, but that doesn't stop me from being a patriotic American and in daily relentless acts using whatever influence I have to model patriotic American behavior.  People want to do what's right and sometimes it only takes one person doing the right thing to start avalanche.  I saw that in my own town, Allentown, PA, when our mayor, Ed Pawlowski, took a wildly unpopular and courageous stand when he declared Allentown would take in (throughly vetted and legal) Syrian refugees at a time when all across the country people were hysterical, thinking that sharing a little of our comfort would diminish us instead of making us larger. Mayor Pawlowski's public display of American values gave all of us, I think, the courage to do the same. It gave me the courage a couple weeks later when I was buying a pot at the Corning outlet in the Sands Casino: an elderly Indian couple was in line in front of me and it was their turn when the cashier pointedly and rudely looked beyond them to me and said, "Come on up here, I'll take you." I pushed them forward, despite their confused and embarassed protests.  No, I thought, we are NOT that kind of people. Coincidentally, a little boy who was with his mother (oblivious to this little drama) was watching the interraction intently. Play it forward, babe.

I can't malign those who voted for either Hillary or Trump. These are the candidates the system served up. There are millions of good people who voted for Trump who wish that he had a moral compass and a sense of humor and millions of good people who voted for Hillary who wish she had articulated a vision that was about something other than herself.  And all of us, the millions from both parties are good people who step up when they witness injustice and help when their neighbor needs it. That's the kind of people we are. That's what patriotic Americans look like.