Michael Gerber Speaks

Here's email my friend Mike Gerber just sent his father:

Be optimistic, Dad--I know it's hard, it's hard for me, too. Their arguments change, but in the end, the GOP wants to stop the world from changing, and if there's one thing we know, it's that the world will change. Our country is getting more diverse, not less; more urban, not less; more global, not less. The GOP can rig elections and slice and dice the electorate all they want, but these are forces they can't control. This is why they're cozy with the end-of-the-worlders--they realize that their time is nearly over.

Bush may well be what he thinks he is--an instrument of God--but not in the way he believes. Wisdom--or if you like, God's grace--does not come without pain. We had to have a Civil War to have freedom; we had to have WWI to get votes for women; we had to have a Great Depression to get Social Security; we had to have WWII to have a UN. There is no Martin Luther King without Jim Crow. History shows this: our loving, accepting God is bigger than Bush's hating and punishing God.

We will win, because it's not about winning. It's about being our best selves, and our actions during this election were in harmony with that. The others will come around--the world is working on them, too. Our job is to be firm, clear, and above all, still here to show a more hopeful alternative. Sooner or later, it will fall to people like us to point the way up and out, and when it does, we need to be ready.