Lent and the Twin Abstentions
Lent and the Twin
Abstentions
My fellow God-fearers know that we are two days into the
Lenten season, bookended by Mardi Gras and
the Resurrection. Like Jesus fasted in the wilderness before launching his
ministry, we are wont to give up
something that sates us. Although my
usual self-denial is metaphorized by forty days without swearing or chocolate,
I’m giving up on something much more gosh darn important and savory: much more
central to who I am. Abstention One: I’m giving up on defending
Republicans. Abstention Two: I’m
taking a break from actively bashing Trump.
This isn’t to say that I’m abandoning my—Party of Lincoln,
Reagan, Kemp, and Bush— “compassionate conservatism” (which I’ve branded as
“Radical Centrism”) but I can no longer defend the Party that has abandoned me:
a Party that excuses Donald Trump’s quasi-fact-infused ineptitude: a Party that
has all-but ignored runaway deficits: a Party that allowed the American people
to be held hostage for thirty five days, costing the economy billions of
dollars, without any appreciable result: a Party that has turned its back on
the core ideals of small government and rule-of-law, economic sustainability,
and the Constitution: a Party that has looked the other way as the
responsibilities of the bully pulpit have been abandoned for petty
personal-made-meta attacks upon individuals and institutions.
OK, I’m starting Abstention
Two right now.
And, in the midst of this, I have turned my eyes toward the
ultra-local, where all politics are most
important and where a nonpartisan race is a breath of fresh and salty,
sea-blown air. To the extent that we are all, always being blown about by the
turbulence of national and interplanetary politics, a retreat to the safety of
our neighborhoods—whether in Daytona, Orlando, Gainesville, or Sebring—reminds
us that, at our dinner tables and in the Publix deli, we are all just family
and neighbors arguing over whether we should or shouldn’t put paprika on
deviled eggs.
We are not born as partisans, we are made into them.
Because of the nature of deadlines and the fact that
Watermark is on a two week publication schedule, I have written and submitted
this piece in advance—a prognostication—with the Tampa nonpartisan mayoral election
ten days in the future for me and just
completed a couple days ago for you, the reader (I also use this timing anomaly
as justification for what seems to you like having broken Abstention Two after only two days).
Likely, Tampa’s mayoral race has resulted in a runoff
between Jane Castor—with her bona fides as both a law-and-order candidate and a
member of the LGBT family—and David Straz—with his bona fides as a successful
businessman-and-diplomat and persistent community leader. Full disclosure: I donated
to both campaigns (a little more to Castor’s), and am otherwise equivocal
between the two. They’d both be fine, thoroughly unexciting and yet competent
leaders for Tampa as it begins to take on the as-yet-theoretical effects of
climate change (see also, Cohen) as well as the more pedestrian concerns around
potholes and parking.
I can’t help but be invigorated by the lack of nastiness
around this race. The last time I watched a white septuagenarian gazillionaire take
on a just-fine, pants-suit-wearing, career public servant, the stakes—and the
related, rhetorical-political drama—were hotter than Tampa in late July. Of
course, the players in our local race are both upstanding citizens, neither of
whom seems capable of being anything but honest and cordial.
Since this is a local, nonpartisan race, I’m not inclined to
break my Lenten promises. I don’t need to defend a Republican, although one of
the candidates voted for Trump and the other is the former police chief. One
has seen the error of his ways, “He simply does not agree with [Trump’s] values,”
while the other probably only recently
developed a set of political ideas.
The closest thing to a low blow that I’ve witnessed between
Mr. Straz and Ms. Castor is a veiled implication about racial profiling in
Tampa. I may have even read too much into this.
As I think about how I’ll pass the time between Fat Tuesday
and the runoff on April 23rd, I’m reminded that there are lots of great
celebrations along the way, from St. Patrick’s Day through the first Sunday
after the full moon following the spring equinox. The timing means that Lent
will be over for exactly two days by the time of the municipal election.
Easter, in that sense, will probably serve as a resurrection
of my own twin inclinations toward rabid concerns that the Republican Party is
far better equipped—if it can reclaim its soul from the imposter Trump—to lead
on the biggest and most consequential, existential questions that our nation
faces, and that Donald Trump is wholly ill-equipped to lead that Party (<—technically,
not a breech of my Lenten promises, but rather a prediction of what I may say
after Easter). Eventually, our city parks become national monuments; our
nonpartisanship devolves into our national concerns.
Whoever wins, I hope she leads the same way she ran,
inoffensively and competently, far differently than what the
post-Lenten-non-local elections will bring soon enough.
Until then, I’ll be counting beads and throwing cabbages and
tossing the luxuries of partisanship to the wind as I hide Easter eggs and plan
to indulge in the blandest, most politically refreshing yet unsatisfying—hollow-chocolate-bunnied—political
springs I’ve ever lived through.
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