October 4, 2020: Let's Get Explicit!

I got a lot of feedback this week on my thoughts - feedback on Facebook, on my blog page, privately via Messenger, and privately via email. I appreciate all of it, and appreciate you for reading what I write, especially in these days when social interactions are fewer than normal, and when opinion-mongers abound.

Because you know I run on praise, you also know I love it when the feedback is positive. And I do try to take heed when it is negative. Sometimes I make changes to what I wrote. Sometimes I don’t.

I have readers from around the world, and in America, from the more conservative and more liberal wing of the left. I get criticism from many of my lefty friends, in time-honored lefty tradition.

I have blocked some readers from the right. I don’t think I have any remaining, but if I do, they are quiet about their politics, and I’m grateful.  

Anyway, one particular piece of feeback really worried me this week, from an old friend who thought my  “Disgust” post about the debate might be discouraging to lukewarm voters, especially lukewarm-but-possibly-Democratic voters.

Whoa!!

That was NOT my intention.

My disgust was with Trump, and I thought that was pretty clear.

I guess I assume that if you know me at all, you know that I sit around writing Postcards to Voters, and that if you read me at all, you know I am a Democrat and a Biden supporter (and a feminist, and a person who misses singing in her church choir, and a painter, and a lover of spreadsheets, and an appreciator of science and medicine, and a wannabe linguist, and many other things).

But perhaps the time has come to be more explicit!

Maybe nothing goes without saying. Or maybe it’s a good time to say the things that go without saying. Okay, then, here are things I wish to make explicit:

• If you aren’t a stranger reading this, I have been wanting to tell you either that I like you or that I love you. You probably know which.

Also, for the record:

• PLEASE vote. Vote early if you can. Encourage others.

And

• PLEASE vote Biden/Harris, so that there can be a giant Democratic victory in both the popular vote and (please please please) in the Electoral College, and don’t just blow this off because you are in a blue state. Please.

And

• PLEASE do everything you can to Flip the Senate. And to keep a Democratic majority in the House.  And to unseat racists.

And

• Black Lives Matter, and I abhor all white supremacists.

I could go on, but I am thinking that may be enough for today.

(Note: If for some reason you aren’t going to vote, or aren’t going to vote Biden/Harris, I probably know that about you already, and I know you’ve made up your mind, and I honestly, fervently don’t want to get into it with you, and if you comment about your plans, I’ll delete your comments. I’m being explicit right now so that my old pal doesn’t tell me I blew it, but I’m not running a community bulletin board. You can use your own platform.  (Frankly, if you aren’t going to vote Biden/Harris, I’m surprised you are here at all. Presumably you came because you like the COVID posts, and I hope you found the visit worthwhile, and if you want to keep reading, that’s your business, but this is not a forum in which I want to argue with you.  There is no forum in which I want to argue with you. I am going to be dead soon*, and I don’t have time. Thank you for your understanding.))

ALSO:

I know I am not going to be sufficiently left (or sufficiently moderate) for some of my Democratic pals, and I’m okay with that, because I think we are all allies. But if I have truly DISCOURAGED any of you, I’m really sorry. It is the very last thing I would want to do. I try not to post if I have nothing to say, and I even try not to go TOO dark if I can help it.

OH! ALSO, I owe an apology to those who thought "Let's Get Explicit!" was going somewhere else. 

Take care. Carry on. Mwah.

*probably within the next 40 years