Two Days Out, and My Heart Is Heavy

Sunday Afternoon Before the Vote

It’s Sunday afternoon, and in two days you walk into a voting booth. I believe Democrats take back the House on Tuesday, and I believe the Senate goes with them. Enough Americans will do the right thing. I feel that in my bones.

My chest, on this quiet Sunday, sits heavy anyway.

After two impeachments, a felony conviction, the Epstein files, an Iran war Congress never approved, gas and grocery prices climbing because of that war, a Justice Department that treats court orders like suggestions, and a daily flood of lies told straight to your face, tens of millions of Americans still stand behind Donald Trump. And that breaks my heart.

I know his name sits nowhere on Tuesday’s ballot. His supporters fill it, Republican candidates who doubled down on his rhetoric, his views, his policies, and his hatred for your neighbors, and every one of them is asking you to keep his foundation standing. That’s why I’m writing to you today. The fact that Tuesday is even a close question tells you this problem runs deeper than one election, and I honestly thought we were a better country than this.

Look at Who They Defend

He has no ethics and no honesty. He does not know how to tell the truth, and he cares nothing about you or the people standing right next to him.

His envoy saluted Vladimir Putin as a humanitarian. He waived his own sanctions law so Putin keeps selling diesel to pay for the war on Ukraine. He pardoned the rioters who beat police officers at the Capitol and then set up a $1.776 billion fund to pay them with your money. He told his crowds to stop complaining about prices. They clapped.

If your neighbor lied to you every morning, mocked anyone who disagreed with him, cashed in on his job, and treated every rule as something meant for the little people, you would keep your kids off his lawn and never hand him the keys to your house, let alone the keys to the country. A man who refuses to tell you the truth has no business deciding how you live.

Why the Red Hat Stays On

Over lunch, a psychologist friend with more than 40 years in practice explained it to me in plain terms. When your loyalty and your conscience stop lining up, the tension gets unbearable, and most people bend reality to make it stop. They wore the hat. They put up the lawn sign. They argued for him on Facebook. They lost friends over him.

Walking away now means admitting they got conned, and nobody wants to be wrong about something this big in front of everyone they know. Trump told them years ago that what they see and read is not what’s happening, and millions chose his word over their own eyes.

Facts slide off a person when their sense of self is tangled up in a red hat, a slogan, a Facebook group full of people who cheer every post, and a leader who tells them every critic is an enemy of the people. It’s a cult, and it is what it is. Loyalty that asks you to ignore your own eyes is a trap with a flag painted on it.

Love at the Dinner Table

Most of us love someone who still wears that hat, and we still set a place for them at Thanksgiving. You show up, you pass the stuffing, and when someone jokes about immigrants or calls climate change a hoax, you say calmly and without flinching that none of this is normal, because silence at that table teaches every kid watching that cruelty earns a free pass. Love keeps the chair. It never hands over your values.

This kind of hurt never makes the news. You look across the table at your brother, your aunt, the neighbor who taught your kids to ride a bike, and the childhood friend who always brought the best pasta salad to the Fourth of July potluck, and somewhere between the turkey and the pie you realize you no longer recognize the world they live in. You still love them. You mourn the person they used to be, and you carry that private grief home in the car after everyone hugs goodbye. Some nights it sits heavier than any headline, because this man reached right into our families and pulled up a chair of his own.

Wednesday Morning Matters More

This fight does not end Tuesday night. The hatred and division this man spent ten years pouring into our families and our group chats will still be sitting there Wednesday morning, and pulling this country back together will take years of patient, stubborn work from people who refuse to quit on their neighbors. Win or lose, the work starts the next day.

Go vote, and take someone with you. Text the cousin who keeps saying he might sit this one out, and tell him why his vote matters to you. Democracy stays alive only as long as ordinary people refuse to look away.

So on Tuesday, vote like your grandkids are watching, and on Wednesday, wake up and start the long work of mending what this man tore apart, because the people who love this country most are the ones who keep showing up for it long after the polls close.

Mitch Jackson, Esq.

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