Today is Day 13 of canvassing in New Hampshire.  It was pouring, I got soaked.  I got cold, I got lost, I kept going.  Then I knocked on the doors of  two apparently sane men who were “undecided.”   I basically lost it.  After saying my piece about doing what I am doing for my daughters and all daughters, and how Hillary has a good heart and a dedicated life of service, and of course she is not perfect, but who is, they were still saying “it’s really tough.”  I had to walk.

In my car, I railed, “What is tough you freaking idiots.” How is this even a question?  What happened to simple decency, respect for others, inclusion, experience and vision?  I had just heard Stephen Colbert interviewed by Terry Gross, where he said that he had not been secretive about his feelings about the “flaming carcass shambling toward us.  Don’t touch it, it’s rabid.”

As I drove back to the office I played Beyonce’s Lemonade album so loud the car shook.  Channeling my nasty woman.

And then I looked at my emails where several people thanked me for what I was doing. Do not thank me.  Get your behinds out there and do the work.  I am not your surrogate, I am not doing this for you.  You need to work too.  I am so very sorry if you don’t think you “can do it.”  Of course you can. Just get up and start. You can knock on a door, you can make a phone call, you can translate your despair and anxiety into action and JUST GET OUT THERE. If you think that this is not worth your discomfort, then you have some deep thinking to do.

I read this from Anne Lamott’s excellent Facebook timeline:  “Jesus would have even loved horrible, mealy-mouth self-obsessed you, as if you were the only person on earth. But He would hope that you would perhaps pull yourself together just the tiniest, tiniest bit–maybe have a little something to eat, and a nap.”

So after I take my nap and have my grande flat white at Starbucks, I am going to GET OUT THERE AGAIN. Because the cost of inaction is far greater than the passing discomfort of falling into the occasional emotional pit.

JOIN ME.  If you don’t know how, then respond to this post and I will connect you.

Here are my lovely daughters in Washing D.C. in the spring of 2009.  We felt it so very important to take them there in the year of the inauguration of Barack Obama.  We felt that the presence of a beautiful black family in the White House was something to share, to mark, to honor, to celebrate.  As married women with two Asian daughters, this was a time when we could feel safe, joyful, hopeful.

I had campaigned in New Hampshire for a month before that 2008 election.  I had supported Hillary, but became a fierce advocate for Obama, and campaigned again in 2012.  I am back in New Hampshire this year.  If I thought that confronting overt racism was hard, the grotesque misogyny of this election is much, much worse.  I did not know the extent to which we are still fighting this ugly, sexist woman-hating fight.

I hear this a lot: “I just don’t like her.”  Just as “make America great again” is code for “white again”, not “liking” Hillary is code for not trusting or respecting women, especially powerful women with a voice.  Full stop.

I am currently watching an excellent documentary series on Netflix called “The Ascent of Woman” I HIGHLY recommend it.  It is a beautifully filmed and narrated survey of the place (displace) of women from ancient times until now, by writer and scholar Amanda Foreman.  Every woman and man should watch this, to understand how deep the currents of manipulation, control and misogyny run, and how cruelly implemented they have been across all cultures and times.

On the way home from canvassing today, I heard a stunning episode of This American Life, focusing on the question of why immigration is such a paranoid, obsessive issue for Republicans.  Here’s the blurb:

One way to understand the split inside the Republican party is to look at immigration. It’s this urgent, emotional issue for so much of the party these days. But why? Over the past year, as producer Zoe Chace has covered the election, she has wondered, why immigration NOW? She had a hard time getting any answers — and then she stumbled upon a small city in Minnesota called St. Cloud.

Zoe connects the anti-immigrant sentiment in St. Cloud with a national network of organizations promoting anti-Muslim views and spreading fear about Sharia law. We hear how the Somali immigrants in town deal with their neighbors’ fears. And then a violent attack at a local mall inflames both sides.

Listen to this program.  The rabidity of the speakers, the involuted, contagious nature of their misinformation is scary.  But it is out there, and we need to know about it.

And then we need to speak truth to distortion and deceit.  We need to break the spell of the orange man with the noxious spew of lies and his sickening ability to tap into the basest of human instincts.  We need to bring all of our caring, kindness, goodness and compassion to the table, hard as that may be.  Just do it.

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