Hey America

Tomorrow is your day. Sitting here in Toronto, I’ve done everything I possibly can to help. I’ve read every New Yorker article and watched The Political Scene and Washington Week. I’ve cancelled my Washington Post subscription - confession - it runs until March so I still get to read everything on my Kindle, but it sends a message along with the 249,999 others to Mr Bezos. I cancelled Twitter almost as soon as it was X. I read all the NY Times articles before turning to Wordle, Strands etc. I’ve watched Robert Reich’s Coffee Klatch and David Remick’s interview with Rachel Maddow. I watched part of an endless production about the American by our own national network. I tried a week of no screens about two weeks ago, but of course I came back.

Have I missed anything? I did read Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. and absorbed the five things that are important - in contrast to much of the above. We need sovereignty - a sense of being our own person, brought about by a careful and caring upbringing. We need unpredictablity - to move beyond the framework of our birth to seek something better. We need mobility - to be able to move physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. We need factuality - to be able to distinguish what is real from fantasy. We need solidarity - because individually we can never do what we can do collectively.

It’s your turn now. I did live in New York in the sixties and produce a dual Canadian/American citizen, that I urged to vote. I can’t. What you do has implications for my country and countless others. The choice is stark - “Again” or “Not Going Back”.