This may be a stupid tangent, but my head hurts at the moment.

In grad school, I went to dinner one night with a fellow Ph.D student, our faculty advisor, and a standout researcher in our field.

The four of us were from Kentucky, Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. (1/x)

At one point during dinner, one of us joked about being from a Commonwealth, not a State, then we realized that the table represented the four Commonwealths of USA. (2/x)

Kentucky is a Commonwealth.

A 'commonwealth' is a political community founded for the common good.

We need commonwealths more than ever. We don't have them, and as a country, we're sprinting away from that ideal. Kentucky failed badly. (3/x)

Our goal as a country should be to do what is best for everyone who calls it home. Be a real fucking commonwealth. And we don't.

Too often when politicians try to espouse the best interests of everyone they get tagged with a label like 'socialist'. (4/x)

And the entrenched, historic, systemic racism isn't going away soon.

So, yes, vote. But keep voting + vote with the best interests of all 330 million people at heart in every single one.

One election isn't going to fix this thing. It's going to take decades of elections.//