Arkansas Post-Election: Who the heck are we?

 The polls were looking good there for a while.  Guess they still are nationally.   But the Arkansas Poll came out yesterday and ruined my fantasy of a purple Arkansas moving toward progressive.

Arkansas Poll 2020 report from KARK.COM News

https://www.kark.com/news/your-local-election-hq/arkansas-poll-finds-more-than-60-percent-support-for-trump-cotton/

Arkansas Poll 2020 Summary Report

https://www.kark.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2020/10/2020-summary-report.pdf

Here’s a quote that’s not surprising, but is still distressing:

“In short, not only has Arkansas now fully realigned (about 25 years after most of her southern peers), but – as we see nationally – almost no one is left in the middle,” Parry said. (That’s Janine Perry, who has run the poll faithfully from the Diane Blair Center at UA since the 1990’s. At least the poll has run since then… not sure Janine is responsible.  She may have been 10 back then.)

25 years after our southern peers, we finally decided to fully embrace Republican ideals just in time for the most … well no use wasting breath saying it.  A bit behind the curve as usual. 

I’m not a politician, just a lowly community organizer.  I don’t have a stake in that game, so I don’t mind if 65% of my fellow Arkansans want to call themselves Republicans.  What I do want to see though, is that we all get past this phase of abject fear and loathing of each other and start working our way toward our better selves.  

I’m saying this as a highly-opinionated woman passionate about the reality that what I consider progressive values – rights and welfare for people, planet and community – have the capacity to carry human culture toward justice and peace in a thriving earth.  Authoritarian values on the other hand, based as they are on the need to prove who is “worthy” and who is “unworthy,” can never get there.  It’ll be trapped in exploitative or even violent cycles for eternity because that’s how it’s designed to work.  

It gives me a new take on that passage in 1st Samuel where the Israelites tell Moses “…how come we can’t have a king like the rest of the nations?” It appears that there are people out there just longing for a king.  It’s a lot to take in when you were raised thinking we were a democracy. 

That brings us to the Choose Democracy Project that a number of good Omni members and friends have been hustling over for several weeks.  The local group is a collaboration of Omni, Compassion Fayetteville and some of the local Quaker Meeting. It comes out of a national collaboration of peace and nonviolence, justice, social change, and other groups concerned at the alarming direction the election was taking.  In Northwest Arkansas we formed Hub groups to contact election and elected officials to be confident that they’re determined to see the election through to fair completion.  As a result of this research we feel pretty confident that most officials want to see a fair election and will do their best for that to happen.  Of course that’s partly because nobody really cares about our election anyway.  I feel for swing state voters who face a battle we won’t need to worry about.  Probably, I mean. Nothing is a given.

Which brings us back to the Arkansas poll, and its evidence that Arkansas is 25 years from recognizing the shift to a system of values that even the rest of the South is opening up to.  This is something that Southern progressives should find alarming and eye opening. 

Not something to deride or belittle our neighbors about though.  Remember all those long ago elections where Democrats won, and instantly went into the same glory-mode that annoys us so thoroughly in our counterparts?   Smug, sneering unkind things about the losing party and their members… I’m not talking about only Arkansas Democrats.  It’s a national offense.  We may watch our party in neighboring states enact the drama in the near future, and we won’t be able to pretend it away.  We helped create this divisive situation.  It may be a gift that in Arkansas there are things we can still learn from our position on the losing end. 

What can progressives do to address this unfortunate situation?  The healing touch for this raw wound is long overdue, right alongside the healings from race, sex, gender and other deep injustices.  That’s not something we can demand of authoritarians.  It’s not in the skill set for most of ‘em. If it happens, I believe progressives will initiate it.

It’s not that we’re actually good at enabling healing from deep psychic wounds. It’s just that when we claim to endorse an “all in this together” frame and care / empathy values, it means we’ve laid out goals for ourselves that can only take shape as we learn into them with compassion for ourselves and others. I believe progressives are recognizing that right now more than ever before, and this is the time to test it out.

There’s a rumbling in my mind about this that isn’t quite clear yet.  But tonight, something bubbling under the surface is asking me if there may be gifts among us that are tuned for this work.  Neighbors, friends and family will have questions.  They’ll find themselves in the confusing position of winning their state for this president who’d they’d like to be “god,” (I’m sure you’ve seen those clips) but watching the rest of the country turn their backs on the imperial potential. (Don’t you wonder what that’ll look like in a QAnon blog?) As the lonely winners, there may be room for a different kind of Thanksgiving dialogue. One can dream.

It’s a profound conversation we need to be having among ourselves. 

Waiting for a conversation

Please invite yourself to join one of these conversations on November 4.  Right as we start coming to terms with whatever strange things start exploding out of the vote count we can begin the new discussion. 

Choose Democracy NWA invites you to a face2face, social distanced sidewalk conversation on Weds November 4, on Mountain Street on the Town Square at 4:00 pm. We’ll wear masks, social distance, and form small groups led by experienced facilitators.  Bring a lawn chair and all the wisdom you’ve acquired in the past four tense years. Dress warm for the evening and let’s talk.

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