To Angry White Males

Posted on October 27, 2004 in Appeals and Goodwill Campaign 2004

Husbands, do not vote against your wives and children this election. Even if you be estranged. Remember the love that united you to them in the first place. Your vote for John Kerry can be a first step in reconciliation, a way of telling them “You are important to me. I can change.”

You’ve blamed the mess you’re in on so much else: on the stock market, on the taxes you pay (and which weren’t reduced by the Republicans), on women’s liberation, on the government. This is a call to accountability and self-respect. Whether you’ve been getting your highs in a bar or from a preacher in a pulpit, you have been hurting yourself wth talk of oppression. Life is hard and is always going to be hard. We’re always going to be seeing part of what we earn flowing away uncontrollably. Others, too, suffer. And the ones who have suffered the worst are the women and children of the world. Even in the United States, they worry about the future.

Give them the Future as an act of Love, as a Gift of confidence in them. You will find as you swallow your pride that you achieve a greater peace of mind. Ask yourself if you are happier than you were four years ago. I say to you that it has little to do with the government and everything to do with your attitude. A vote for the negativism of George W. Bush only compounds your misery. “Money is like manure,” says Horace Van der Gelder in Hello Dolly. “You have to spread it around to do any good.” This wisdom will help you understand why the accumulation of riches has not helped you feel better, why you can’t sleep at night. Give yourself the gift of happiness. A vote for John Kerry — for universal health care, for wise response to the terrorism, for the elimination of the deficit, for preserving our national forests and national parks so that your grandchildren may walk in them, for a more equitable tax structure where the top 1% are paying their fair share rather than placing the burden on the rest of us including you — will ease your mind. Stop thinking about money. It causes pain and no matter how ahead you get, you’re never going to feel secure. Think about other people. Think about your wives and children. Change how you live in this world. Spare yourself the unhappiness of always being the adversary to the powerless and the poor. Vote your love.