Its really okay to break up with people – even family members. Even people you thought you could love no matter what.

For years I told myself that I had to hang in there no matter what you said or did. In the hopes of shaping what you saw and heard. In the hopes I could understand you. In the hopes you’d think of others. As valuable. As equal. In the hopes you’d vote for people – instead of just your pocketbook.

So many conversations in which I wondered how much you would have to own and control before you’d be willing to vote so that others could have a shot? When you’d purchased all that could be bought for yourself and your children and their children, then, could you vote for others to have a chance?

I am not sure whether I helped change your mind or enabled you to go on thinking you were a good person while you harbored your greedy, horrible views and acted upon them. Voted upon them.

But I do know I’m done with you now. I am beyond holding hard conversations with you. Conversations that are hard for me but merely feed your need to dominate. You feed off of the pain your views cause. And view expressions of pain and emotion as evidence my views and my resolve are weaker. You believe that those that think as I do are laughable, gullible, easily manipulated fools and that you hold the winning hand. You believe you’re on the winning side. More people will come along with you because they want to feel powerful not weak. That’s what you’re selling. Hogs eating hogs.

So every exchange with you is a battle for domination. Not a conversation. Not an exchange between equals. A battleground of your choosing tilted toward your hand.

But now. You will stand there alone. The battle is elsewhere. And you cannot imagine the strength of my resolve, fed as it is by love and facts. While you vote your portfolio and interest rates. And seek deregulation. Freedom to grub everywhere. At any cost. I’m voting my love of people, my faith in our ability to come together and my conviction that some of us will make sacrifices for those in greater pain. I stand with that army of people who believe we are all in this together. The 80% of people worldwide who made sacrifices to protect their families and neighbors from a virus and millions who took to the streets because we believe Black Lives Matter.

The upcoming election will be a bloody skirmish no matter what and may become a bloody war if your tribe is determined to suffocate mine. To stifle participation in the democratic ritual of voting.

And don’t imagine the army I belong to can be stopped by an election – however it goes. Some of us are extraordinarily good at the long march.

There are no perfect candidates. I am always in favor of the clumsy, stumbling efforts of a person who cares about people over the brazen, craven certainty of those who only care about power and preserving their position.

© Angela Blanchard