It is said that elections have consequences.

Never in a generation, has this been truer than in this election of 2016.  Given that, the act of voting for a third party to protest “the system,” or as an expression of anger over Bernie Sanders’ loss, or general frustration with the process or with lack of progress in our politics, is an extremely consequential act[1].  Because that vote will have the effect of helping to hand the Presidency to Donald Trump.  That protest vote will have very real consequences.

But those consequences are not born equally by all.  The levers of government impact those who are at the margins of society the most.  If you are among the more fortunate, living in relative comfort, enjoying some degree of power (or access to it), perhaps taking all of that for granted (like a fish to water), you will not suffer the consequences of a Trump administration like those  who do not enjoy the same privileges (though all of us will suffer).

If elected, the day President Trump takes office, the world will change dramatically.  Both houses of Congress will be controlled by Republicans and dominated by the Freedom Caucus, the most extreme stripe of the Republican Party.  Legislation will begin to flow, but unlike now, there will be no Democratic President to veto it.  The path forward will be clear for enactment of a right-wing, populist, anti-government agenda steeped in anger and contaminated with various versions of bigotry.  So for example, the new Congress will make good on their promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with tax subsidies or nothing at all.  That means millions of low income people who currently rely on Medicaid or health exchange subsidies for their healthcare, will no longer have access to that care.  (Although 51% of Americans want to repeal the ACA, that’s because most of them (58%) want to replace it with a federally funded system like Medicare for all).

But legislative changes are just one part of the picture.  What doesn’t get talked about enough is the way in which the raw power of the Executive branch itself, will impact people’s lives.  In addition to ruling through Executive Order, on day one, Donald Trump will begin populating the reins of government with new staff, with Trumpian decision makers (selected for their positions under the direction from the likes of Roger Ailes, Steve Bannon, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, etc.) who will set the standards and priorities for government action across a sweeping set of issues and realities for millions of people[2].  These new minions will flow into all of the federal departments and authorities – from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Department of Justice (DOJ), from the Department of Education (DOE) to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and on and on.  Their reach will extend into every corner of life, particularly for those who lack any sort of political power.  Here’s just a sampling of what that will likely mean:

• For poor children living in a city, new decision makers in the EPA will decide the degree to which they will be able to drink water free of lead, and breathe air free of carcinogens and pollutants.

• For low or medium-income teenagers, the new decision makers in the Department of Education will determine whether they can attend college, by affecting their access to grants and loans (79% of Americans do not see college as affordable); for those who are African American, new decision makers in DOJ will decide whether their civil rights will be aggressively or limply defended.

• For those of the Muslim faith, decision makers in the CIA or NSA will decide how aggressively they will be surveilled, and those in DOJ will decide where the boundaries of their civil rights lie, or whether to pursue and prosecute those who may threaten them out of bigotry or hate.

• Children of illegal immigrants will have to wonder whether the new decision makers in the Immigration Service are going to deport their parents. (72% of Americans do not believe illegal immigrants should be deported)

All of these everyday decisions and thousands more, taken by the federal bureaucracy, will have a penetrating influence on what happens in the everyday lives of millions of Americans.  This is not symbolic or abstract.  It is practical and very real.

And that’s all before we’ve even considered what a Trump administration would mean for the federal courts, and most particularly the Supreme Court, which will be profound and generational in scope.  With at least one and as many as three new lifetime Supreme Court appointments coming up in the next administration, and likely to be filled by Trump with Scalia-like Justices, we can expect a changed world for decades to come.  These changes could very realistically include:

• No constitutional right to abortion (56% of Americans support this right)
• Destruction of labor unions (56% of Americans support labor unions)
• Disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, especially African Americans and young people
• Decimation of civil rights protections for people of color, women, religious minorities, LGBT people, etc.
• Unfettered infusion of money into politics (72% of Americans was to reduce the influence of money in politics)
• Unfettered access to guns (54% of Americans support stricter gun laws)

. . . among other things.

But wait there’s more.  As Commander in Chief, a President Trump will have broad latitude and largely unchecked authority to interact with the wider world as he sees fit.  He can make foreign policy decisions based on how they enrich his many business interests abroad; he can order our military to violate international law and commit torture, putting our men and women in uniform in danger of being subjected to the same treatment; he can spout off and say ill considered, in-the-moment things that alienate our allies or energize our enemies; he can overreact to petulant dictators and trigger a minor skirmish, a regional war, or a nuclear cataclysm.  Yeah, there’s that.

And this discussion would not be complete without considering what a Trump presidency would mean for climate change.  Again, the consequences would be greatest for the most vulnerable citizens, though in the end we all suffer.  Rising waters and the impact of extreme weather events, guaranteed to occur with increasing frequency as they already have, kill those least able to escape their path or fully prepare for them, destroy property, and disrupt and displace whole populations across the globe.  Just consider the experience of Hurricane Katrina as a prime example.  Trump, backed by the Republican Party, plans to ignore science on this subject, back out of commitments to reduce carbon emissions, and return to coal-fired power plants.  If you see climate change as the existential crisis that I, most Democrats, most Americans (64% according to Gallup) and  99% of the world’s scientists do, you would agree that  this outcome is perhaps THE MOST significant consequence of this election.

Yes, elections do have consequences.

If you cast a vote for Hillary Clinton and she is elected, the results may not be exactly what you would have preferred, in an ideal world.  But what you will have, is a President who is aligned with the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party, and who has already moved to the left on many issues.  And you will have a President who will be beholden to Democratic and Progressive voices who can still influence her on policy, since she is a politician who would be seeking re-election in 4 years.  You will have a President who can keep the conversation moving in the right direction.  You will have none of that if Trump is elected.

But if you sit this election out, either by voting for a third party or by not voting at all, that is, if you choose to exercise your privilege to protest, you will be enabling Donald Trump to become President.  In so doing, you will have a hand in dooming millions of Americans to undeserved suffering and subjecting the world to dangerous and potentially catastrophic consequences.

This is an election that calls for utmost responsibility from every voting age adult.  Come November 8, one of two people will become our next President.  If a Trump presidency is unacceptable to you, if you are committed to a progressive agenda, then register to vote, go the polls, and cast your vote for Hillary Clinton.  Own your part in this democracy, and choose to participate, rather than simply protest.

And then once you’ve helped to elect Hillary Clinton, work hard to hold her accountable for what matters to you, for what you believe will make our country and the world a better place.

That’s how it works. That’s what keeps America great.

[1] If you live in a solid blue state, your protest vote won’t matter, so I guess you can do whatever you want.  Still, to my mind, strengthening Hillary Clinton’s overall popular vote has value in shoring up her capacity to deliver on a progressive agenda.

[2] Through promulgation of regulations that interpret law, and through enforcement priorities.

Fear, and its close companion anger, is a powerful motivator – in direct competition with love.  Fear thrives on impulse; love plods, sustains, and never ever gives up.  Reason struggles for oxygen in the midst of both.

We are, unavoidably, in a fear moment, one that is familiar to me.  I have a confession to make.  After 9/11, after witnessing its Armageddon-like destruction right in my backyard, including the deaths of my husband’s team of co-workers, my fears persuaded me to believe the WMD propaganda that followed, and I supported the invasion of Iraq.  I, like so many others, acted out of fear.  And today, we are reaping the consequences of that disastrous decision.

With the invasion of Iraq, we poked a hornet’s nest, and now we’re all getting stung in the confused chaos that has followed. The inconvenient truth is, we helped create the Syria and Iraq we have today, and the ISIS we so fear in this moment (just as we helped create the Bin Laden who wreaked the last round of havoc). In that regard, we have a particular responsibility when it comes to the refugee crisis that is erupting before our eyes (but that’s a subject for another discussion).

So it is with the lessons of recent history in mind, that I recoil from reflexive, muscular solutions born out of fear and a thirst for revenge.  What to do will be hotly debated in the weeks ahead.  It is peak political season, so we can expect much of that debate will be, to use the technical term, hooey.  This situation strikes me as one of the most (possibly the most?) complex foreign policy and security challenges we’ve ever faced.  It is not a task for amateurs.  It will require every bit of expertise, fortitude, reasoned analysis and judgment our leaders can muster.  And in that vein, I for one am so very glad we have the president we have.  Many are upset that he didn’t, in his Turkey press conference, sate the national appetite for venom and victory through battle.  Yes, there is a certain satisfaction in hearing our leaders strike a strident tone in times like these, as when George W. hopped up on that smoldering pile to warn our enemies of revenge.  It feels damn good to hear that, in the moment.

But that embattled tone is nothing more than a fix, a short-term high in a struggle that is long, arduous, and complex. We can keep doing what we’ve been doing, responding to recurring moments of fear and anger with recurring deployments of troops and recurring rhetoric that temporarily soothes, like some kind of nightmarish Groundhog Day that becomes the new norm for a generation.  Or at some point, we can decide to go through withdrawal and seek to disrupt the vortex of destruction and hate that is self-perpetuating in the Middle East.  We can try a different approach that might outlast the hate, make room for peace and yes, perhaps even one day, love.  That’s a long term proposition.  I think that’s what the President is trying to do, and I support him.  I hope we and our media will do a better job during this debate than we did in the lead up to Iraq, to fairly evaluate the facts, listen to the real experts, and recognize and tolerate the nuances that complicate any potential solution (despite their annoying lack of entertainment value).

I close with the poem that came to mind as I watched Obama at his press conference in Turkey.  It encapsulates perfectly what I love, and what many on the other side so hate, about this president:

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

My daughter’s college a Capella group sings this song called Just Friends – maybe you know it. It’s about a guy who wants to get to know a girl, and in the refrain he says —

You ain’t even really gotta be my girlfriend
I just wanna know your name and maybe some time
We can hook up, hang out, just chill

That’s nice. If he can’t have her as a girlfriend, he just wants to spend time with her (well, and also hook up with her, but skip that part for now – I’m talking about the other part). You know, he just wants to hang out together, as friends. He values being with her, just chillin’.

Those were the days. I remember those days and I miss them – the social part I mean – in college (and to a degree early adulthood) – when social life was dominated by just hanging out together. The whole thing happened organically, a product (I surmise), of a somewhat unique confluence of environmental conditions and the developmental traits of college students.

First, dorm living placed us in very close proximity to one another. That made it ridiculously easy to socialize with others. It also imposed an intimacy that quickly forced us beyond first impressions or appearances – let’s face it, once someone has seen you stumble to the bathroom at 7 a.m. donning ratty sleeping-sweats and raging bedhead, you can’t really impress them anymore.

We adults on the other hand, live in increasing isolation from one another, cordoned off in the privacy of our claimed personal spaces – our homes – where chance encounters with others are few and far between. We, instead, must intentionally plan and orchestrate most of our social experiences, and we usually don’t schedule them to take place until we’ve at least showered.

Second, we were (most of us) very busy. Socializing was something that had to be squeezed into already packed academic, extracurricular, exercise, and other schedules. It was a priority, but had to be achieved with efficiency. Hanging out is an extremely efficient way to socialize.

Wait a minute. Our adult selves are just as busy – no, way more busy than our college selves. That’s interesting. More on that later.

Third, we had no money, no space, and no stuff. College kids are generally cash-poor, have no access to well-equipped kitchens or dining rooms, and mostly rely on paper plates and plastic forks for food presentation and service. Aside from on-campus parties, the social experience was notably simple and sparse – we just hung out. No one was going to plan and prepare some gourmet feast, meticulously presented on chi chi china in some perfectly appointed house-and-garden setting because, well, we had no money, no space, and no stuff.

Compared to our younger selves, we adults have more money, more space and more stuff. Hmm. Also very interesting. A clue, I would say.

Fourth, we were unattached. The only significant relationships vying for our time on a day to day basis, were with our friends.

As adults, if we’re married, our spouses (and later, our children), occupy the center of our emotional and social lives.   Choosing to hang out informally with friends suddenly involves a negotiation concerning the needs of others and the demands of family life. The informality and spontaneity of social life as it existed before, just becomes more difficult in the context of a family unit.

Finally, we were still basically kids when we were in college. Developmentally, college kids remain largely unadulterated . . . literally. By this I mean, they haven’t yet been exposed to, let alone absorbed the unwritten social canon that operates in the mental backgrounds of most adults. They just get out there and engage, for the sake of mutual social pleasure, period. They’ve not yet succumbed to adult ideas and patterns of social life – patterns that seem sometimes to value the trappings of the social experience more so than the quantity or quality of the experience.

When did we learn this? Why do we feel we have to plan and prepare, perhaps seek to impress, or at the very least meet some imagined standard that typically involves an offering of well-prepared food, a variety of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage options, a spic and span house, and a thoughtfully (if not fashionably) put-together outfit? When did hanging out somehow turn into entertaining?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to entertain my friends. I don’t want to impress them. I just want to be with them.

(Note: This is not a knock on entertaining. Entertaining can be great fun, for hosts and guests. But entertainment does not cultivate real intimacy, and therefore cannot form the backbone of a truly fulfilling social life. Hanging out, on the other hand, very much can.)

So I do yearn (in these ways), for the social life of my youth — the way it was before busy, complicated, adult life came along. I yearn for the time when we had neither the means nor the inclination to entertain, but we did have every inclination to hang out.

And therein lays the irony . . . that just as our lives become more demanding, we compound the problem by assuming even more demanding social habits. If you’re like me, you then end up socializing less, because the whole thing sometimes feels like just too much effort. We would be much better served by sticking to our original approach, because hanging out is super simple and way less demanding than entertaining is. It’s perfect for busy, time-strapped people. It requires no preparation, no cash, and no real work. Just time together — talking, laughing, complaining, catching up . . . minimally-planned, always underdressed. Food? Sure, all I have right now are these potato chips and some carrots. House a mess? I’ll move this stuff off the couch so you have a place to sit. You’re tired so you might not stay long? No worries, I can relate. Glad you stopped by.

This is honest, in-the-moment, no expectations socializing . . . a.k.a. hanging out. It’s not about getting it just so, or feeling obligated, or living up to anything . . . it’s about the fact of being together. Period.

That’s a beautiful thing.

We adults, (some of us anyway) somehow lose this essential concept as we navigate adult life, and it’s a whopper of a loss. But while we may not be able to exactly replicate the special situational chemistry that led to hanging out in college, we can get there another way — by making intentional choices to do things differently.

If you are among the very fortunate who have figured out how to maintain the spontaneity and informality of a college-like social life in your adult years, I congratulate you. Keep it up and treasure it, as I’m sure you do.

If you are like me, and have lost touch with the art of hanging out, I hope you (and I) can, as the song goes, get ourselves back to the garden. It’s where real living lives, and where real friendship has the opportunity to bloom.