A Father’s Day Gift Suggestion
An open letter to my sons, aged 17 & 18, on Father’s Day, about voting.

1/

Boys,
As you know, I’m pretty impulsive when it comes to buying stuff. I also lack any sort of “remember to ask for this for X day” post-it-type note-handler in my brain, so whenever I want or need something I just pretty much go out and buy it.

2/

This makes me a difficult person to buy gifts for (especially since you’re under 21 and you can’t yet buy me booze). So I’ve been asked to think about what you can give me for Father’s Day.

3/

I’ve got an idea, but it’s not an easy ask, so please don’t do it unless you can commit whole-heartedly. If you’re not certain that you can commit to following through then I’d be fine with a nice note — maybe about something we’ve done together that impacted you,...

4/

... like a memoir-style essay about climbing the trees behind the Lincoln Memorial or hiking through Yosemite—something like that will probably make me cry, which as I remember it is pretty much “job one” when it comes to Father’s Day gifts.

5/

But to get to it: I think a great Father’s Day present would be for you two to promise me that you’ll register to vote as soon as you’re able, which means G_ ,now that you’re 18 you just need to REGISTER!
https://vote.org 

6/

In T_’s case, well, you need to turn 18 in another 10-ish months. Then, here's the gift: commit to researching the candidates and voting in every local, state, and federal primary and November election for at least the rest of my life. And maybe a special election or two.

7/

In November, 2016, only about 139M of 231M eligible US voters voted. The difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in Michigan was 10,704 votes. In Wisconsin it was 22,748 votes. In Pennsylvania, Trump won by 44,292 votes.

8/

In Florida the difference was a bit larger at 112,911, but only about 9.1M voted out of about 15M eligible voters.

We’re seeing now the results of that voter apathy combined with a fair amount of active and passive voter suppression.

9/

We’re seeing the influence of other countries investing in our elections via Facebook ads and Twitter/Reddit trolling, back-room self-serving diplomacy and secret “loans”.

10/

We’re seeing people who need health care and a living wage actively vote against their own interests because they’ve been conditioned to do so since the Nixon/Goldwater “Southern Strategy” that used racism to appeal to white southerners.

11/

We’re seeing what happens when some show up to vote while too many others stay home due to repression or fear or apathy, and many others just can’t be bothered to research, fill out, and mail their ballots.

12/

The few people elected by much less than half the citizens of this country are now appointing prosecutors, adding judges to the bench, and installing overseers to industries they were once a part of, sometimes while still owning stock in those industries.

13/

In some cases (like judges) these people will do the deciding. For everyone. For decades.

14/

Local officials elected in “down-ballot” election races that get little fanfare outside their communities get to make laws or set zoning requirements that might force a clinic to close to suit their own “moral” agenda.

15/

When a young girl has a child she can’t afford to take care of, those same people who were against her sex education and wouldn’t dream of letting her or her boyfriend have free condoms, and also took away her choice…

16/

well… they’re now either directly or indirectly against her getting food stamps or affordable health care or childcare assistance or advancing her education or earning a reasonable living wage.

17/

It’s a reprehensible and unforgivable moral hypocrisy, and in many parts of the country the minority in power right now are forcing their views on the majority because —whether due to apathy or ability or laziness or voter suppression — too many people simply don’t vote.

18/

Maybe we needed these last three and a half years to happen, I don’t know. Maybe too many of us had become too complacent as citizens and we’d forgotten how incredibly important voting is.

19/

Now we’ve seen just how terrible it can be to have a dementia-addled narcissistic reality show personality dragging this country and its strength, dignity, and moral authority through the mud.

20/

Maybe we’ll all be better off going forward because something much closer to 100% of eligible voters will make their voices heard.

21/

We can hope to come out of this better for having experienced it, but we’ll also have lost 120,000+ people to sickness and many more tens of thousands will die simply because wearing or not wearing a mask has become a political statement.

22/

Many more will suffer physically and/or emotionally though bullying, racism, greed, anti-science, anti-intellectualism, and other unbelievably narrow and shallow mindsets that have been normalized by the current presidential administration.

23/

Those normalized behaviors have trickled down to those federal, state, and local officials who depend on the continuation of one person’s power for the survival of their dying brand.

24/

From your first days, your mom and I have tried to grow your intellects in balance with empathy. Like everyone else you’ll use your EQ as well as your IQ to feed your political education and continue to shape your ideals, but it’s going to require some work .

25/

It will require some level of at least studying the voter pamphlets and following the news and reading about the candidates as people and not just as party drones.

26/

I hope you’ll take all you know and feel, innately, into consideration and make the most moral and ethical choices to help improve this world in deep and meaningful ways. I hope you’ll do this for yourselves and for the people you love, or will love.

27/

I know this is a big ask. It would be a long-term, ongoing present for me — one that I’ll cherish every year, and the benefit for you is that you’ll never need to even think about another Father’s Day present for me for as long as I live.

28/

Of course I’ll still want a token gift at Christmas so I have something to open, and maybe a silly card and a bottle of wine on my birthday, but you can rest easy the night before all future Father’s Days knowing that for the rest of my days, just call me, or email me...

29/

... or radio me on the SSB if I’m circumnavigating New Zealand or rounding Cape Horn or at anchor off the Marquesas, and tell me every primary season and every November that you’ve researched the candidates and you’ve voted.

30/

It will be a massive gift to me to know that I’ve helped raise two brilliant and empathetic men who care, and who take their responsibilities seriously when it comes the recovery — or hopefully, someday, the resumption and preservation of — our republic.

31/

And again, if you’d rather just send me a nice note or a funny dad meme, that’d be nice, too. But as you continue to grow into men, I can tell you for certain that today, Father’s Day 2020, what I’d love more than anything from you is a promise to be an active participant...

32/

...in deciding who makes the laws, who vets the cops; who sets aside acreage you’ll hike with your children or opens up those same lands to mining and natural gas drilling; who decides what sort of love is allowed and what you’re allowed to do with your own body;

33/

...and who ultimately gets to decide what this world will look like, whether those civilization-level decisions are small and incremental over time, or in the case of this disastrous presidency, very large.

34/

All that said, no matter what you decide to give me or get for me today, know that I love you both very much and want only the best for you. And yes, I voted a couple months ago in the primaries, and this November I’ll vote again.

35/

When I do so it will be my job as a citizen to carefully evaluate the badness in the world and the people who either perpetrate or allow it. But I’ll also be thinking of you, and me, and all of the people, places, and ideas we love.

xo
Dad

/thread