Handshake

I’ve been struggling to maintain an even keel as I approach both my observations and my resistance to how our democracy will unfold in the coming four years.

First, I started by setting some rules: I will not click on or read anything that has DT’s name in it. Can I do that and stay well-informed? So far, I have been, actually.

I will not watch a video with him in it—not just because I don’t want to give oxygen to his lies and his desire to fuel hatred, although that’s a nice sidebar for me.

Mostly, I’m doing these things because it’s the only way I can keep hope alive in myself. And I have hope—not just because I want it, but because I believe we can come out the other side of this dark moment in history. Sure, I don’t like what I’m seeing so far, how people are crumbling beneath him like paper before I throw it in a fire. But I see other things too: people standing up, things he’s not getting. He may not get put in jail, but at least he has to show up as if he were a law-abiding citizen when he’s sentenced later this week. That works for me.

Okay, so I have these rules about what I will not do, but what I’m struggling with more is what I will do. “We have to meet them in the middle!” some fellow Americans demand. Keep the conversation going! Try to ask enough questions to understand where they’re coming from. So, I’ve spent the last two weeks, amidst some real downtime and contemplation about things other than my navel, trying to figure out how I was going to do that.

And then I saw the video above. Please watch it if you haven’t seen it. It’s the new senator from Nebraska, Deb Fischer, being sworn in by our Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, with her husband at her side.

Vice President Harris swears her in, then shakes her hand and warmly congratulates her with a real smile on her face. I know the senator’s politics; I followed her campaign. She is a MAGA girl through and through. Kamala treated her like a woman who was elected senator of the state of Nebraska. She shook the hand of the office the woman holds, not necessarily the less-than-decent human I consider her to be.

And then the senator’s husband, Bruce, did something extraordinary. He refused to look at Kamala as she congratulated him enthusiastically, and he refused to shake her hand. Vice President Harris pulled her hand back, smiled and moved on.

Watch Bruce’s face. It was intentional. The NY Post, whose leanings leave no room for debate around motive, said he was holding a cane in his right hand, so that is why he didn’t shake her hand. Puh-lease. He could have moved it. He could have looked at her and smiled. Watching the video, I believe he loved this moment where he could reject her in a way that he thinks is powerful but I think is weak and disrespectful to the people of Nebraska. They elected her to represent them. He stands there holding the Bible so his wife can be sworn in, and he holds the office she is entering with such high esteem—and the people who sent her there—that he can be disrespectful to the office of the Vice President of the United States? WTF?

And then it hit me. This dilemma around how to cross the aisle and seek to understand rather than be understood. On my best days, that is a calling card I hope to use in all interactions. But there are times when that mantra is not appropriate for those I’m dealing with. I believe we have crossed over to that moment in time.

I don’t have to find a way across the aisle. I don’t have to meet them halfway. I don’t have to try to understand them. I don’t have to do any of those things. It is not my job to waste my time on these people who have crossed the line that might put them past the point of no return. And, at least at this moment anyway, I think it will not change anything. That ship has sailed. And, in the end, I believe there are more of me than them. And, if that is true, getting the me’s to start taking action is a better use of my time. I am in fight or flight mode.

In dealing with them however, I do need to behave in the way I wish to be remembered, another mantra I hold dear. My therapist, forty years ago, said it to me: “Christine, when are you going to start behaving the way you want to be remembered?” Talk about worth the money. I will be polite when I need to be in the same place. I will never refuse to shake a hand; but I will no longer seek to engage.

Ok, we get it Christine. So what will you do?

What I will do in this moment in time is fight back. Every single day, in every single way. I will resist.

But I have rules. I have to follow laws to do it. I have to behave the way I want to be remembered with every action I take. I have to make sure I do every single thing I can to ensure they don’t see me rolled over in a fetal position, accepting that they have won everything. They haven’t won everything. There are millions and millions of people who think like I do.

I have to take each day and do one thing that makes me feel good about the action I took. You know what I’m going to do today? I’m going to send editorials to newspapers in Lincoln and Omaha, as a University of Nebraska alumna who also founded and financially endowed The Farmers’ Foundation in Nebraska so the farmers’ children of small farms in that beloved state—who educated me in more than my business major—can succeed. Family farms were going down the drain in America in the ’80s and ’90s, and the farmers’ children didn’t have the resources to go to college. Big farming corporations were buying up the farms that had been taken from the farmers who didn’t understand well enough how leveraging their farms to make them larger could put their legacy at risk. Those corporate farms now? They are some of the billionaires that my Nebraskan neighbors voted for. And silly, foolish Nebraskans continue to vote for people who have never had their interests at heart.

Maybe one of the newspapers will publish it. Maybe someone will read it and realize that her husband behaved that way. Maybe somebody who voted for her will wish they hadn’t. I only need one person to make me realize I made a difference.

I am working on a piece for this newsletter about how, if you go back in history, the resistance in places like France during World War II was not made up of famous, fabulous leaders of the land. The resistance, which was paramount in winning the war, was made up of simple people like you and me. The baker who put messages in the middle of bread dough. The people who hid Anne Frank and her family. The two unmarried sisters in England who loved opera, who kept going to Europe and bringing back the money and jewels of the Jews who were trying to get out but weren’t allowed to carry money and jewels out—money and jewels that were the only way they could get the visas they needed. They did it many times and saved tens of people. It was people like us - we the people - who did small acts of resistance and it saved the world. At least for awhile.

We don’t have to do big things. We have to take the 80 million strong that we are and do little things—one-person things. That will add up to the big thing. Take our country back, for it has been taken from us at this moment. It has. Time to realize that.

And for today, it’s me against Nebraska. Okay, I have to correct that. It’s me against a horrible man in Nebraska who is married to a United States senator.