Consent of the Governed

Elections are our way, here in America, of consenting to be governed by those we elect. They have told us what they plan to do, and we like what we’ve heard, so we vote for them. And off they go. Usually at the speed of a turtle race, which gives us time to forget all about them for a while and check back in at the next election to see how well they delivered on their promises. Then, as they say: lather, rinse, repeat.

But this election didn’t give us the usual turtle race. The hares have taken over. In fact, with a nod to the apocryphal pet-sized dietary preferences of the Haitian immigrants of Springfield Ohio, they’re eating the turtles.

This is not what we expected. Or not most of us anyway. Yeah, yeah, it’s easy to see why people got frustrated, why they wanted change. The same reasons we always want change. The grass is always greener just over the hill. We’re dreamers, hopers, believers. Suckers, too.

There are some hard-core MAGAs who are cheering the Donnielon savagery, but for many of us—most of us, I suspect—this is too much too fast. It seems trigger-happy. It feels bulldozerish, like we’re in the back seat of the car with someone we thought we liked who is coming on way too strong. Should we scream and lurch out the door? Suddenly, this is not feeling consensual.

I didn’t start this piece off thinking about the parallels between governing and consensual sex, but now that I have landed there, I think the analogy is nearly perfect. We all understand sex. We all understand courtship, most of us anyway. It’s a little giddy, and you’re not quite sure what you’re getting into, but the attraction is strong and you want to take the chance. The chance you think you are taking, though, is having, your heart broken, not being raped.

We are being raped. Sure, a majority of us voted for the guy, but when he turns out to be so much more aggressive than we expected, having someone say we voted for him and it’s our own fault is like saying we drank too much before climbing into that back seat. Well, maybe we did, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok to rape us. That’s not what we thought we were getting into.

We need help here. The car door is stuck. The windows are fogged. Metaphorically, we’re too far away to be heard, or at least it feels like that. This is our MeTooVoter moment.

If you feel like Donnielon is raping you, say so. Scream it. Tell everyone, so they will know it is happening to you too, not just them, so they will gain strength from your voice. Scream it so no one can ignore it, so no one can look the other way.