Without exaggeration, this Tuesday’s election may be the most significant any of us will ever participate in. The consequences come next year will be great. But it’s also true that whichever way the results come out, we will remain a nation divided with our democracy in peril. Whichever candidate takes the oath of office on January 20, our task will be the same: to remember we are citizens of the United States.

            How are you doing today?

            On Tuesday this week, I attended a clergy breakfast hosted by the LA County Department of Mental Health.  They offer these breakfasts twice a year and invite local clergy to attend.  Clergy are often among the first professionals to interact with persons suffering with various kinds of mental health issues.  The Department of Mental Health wants us to know more about the needs of people in our communities, what we can do as clergy, and to be aware of the services the County offers to connect folks with the mental health help they need.

            The pancakes were good.

            This week’s presentation was a mental health 101, with basic information about common disorders.  One of the first slides in the presentation defined anxiety disorders.  Let’s do a little self-assessment, shall we?

            In the last two weeks have you on a sometime or regular basis..

            Felt excessive fear or worry?

            Have you had trouble concentrating or making decisions?

            Have you been feeling irritable, tense, or restless?

            How about physical symptoms such as experiencing nausea, or abdominal distress?

            Have you had heart palpitations?

            Have you noticed yourself, sweating, trembling, or shaking?

            Any trouble sleeping?

            How about a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom?

            Yes.  Me too.

            I’m a minister not a mental health professional so I’m not qualified to diagnose General Anxiety Disorder.  But, I suspect for most of you your present anxiety has a very specific, not general, cause.

            It’s been a tough several weeks.  Or several months.  Or several years.

            And it will not end on Tuesday.

Our church’s non-profit tax status requires that we not engage in partisan politics, so I will not from the pulpit, as your minister, tell you who you should vote for.  I’d love to make an impassioned speech supporting my preferred candidate, but this isn’t the place.  That isn’t worship.  And you can read the news reports, watch the campaign events, and make up your own minds, just as I have.

            You already know, because I know you’ve been paying attention, that the difference between the two possible paths America will choose on Tuesday is the most significant of any vote in our lifetime.  Not only who we choose as President but also the vote for which party controls the House and Senate will result in consequences for the nation and world that you and I and our children will live in for years to come.

            Some policy differences, as grave as they are, if found to be harmful could be reversed in a subsequent election.  That’s the normal back and forth of our two-party system.

            General loss of trust in government, the unbridled influence of outrageous amounts of money, and the rampant corruption made possible by persons who see political power as a means to their own ends rather than a public service, are also reversible, though that takes more time and political will and leadership.

            But decisions we make about climate policy in the next few years will have irreversible consequences.  Decisions we make about ensuring the integrity of our elections, protecting an independent judiciary, preserving politically neutral Federal agencies, may irreversibly damage the foundations of our democratic system.  And decisions we make about foreign policy may result in a fundamental re-alignment of global power that will either strengthen the safeguard of liberal democracies and the protection of human rights worldwide, or abandon much of humanity to authoritarian control and political oppression.

            There will be consequences of our election on Tuesday.  Much depends on which way we vote.  We should choose carefully.

            But our anxieties about American politics will not change on Tuesday, or whenever the election is finally decided.  And this is what I want us to consider today.

            Whoever wins the White House and Congress this Tuesday, they will win by a very narrow margin.

            I used to wonder why our national politics are so evenly divided.  But the answer isn’t mysterious.  It’s simply that both parties want to win and they’re good at doing what’s necessary to win.  So, they strive equally for every small advantage, and they shift their positions and their messaging as they need to in order to stay competitive.

            So, like most recent elections, one or two or three seats will decide the majority in the Senate.  The House majority will be similarly narrow.  It’s probable that the Presidential race in some of the swing states will be decided within only a few tens of thousands of votes.  And the national popular vote will be separated by only three or four percentage points.  We are a closely divided nation.

            And we will continue to be a closely divided nation after this election.

            But the problem isn’t that we disagree.  The problem is how we disagree.

            Disagreement is a necessary part of a liberal democracy.  Disagreement is how we learn, and improve, and advance together toward a society that benefits all.  Disagreement, when respectful, thoughtful, and reasonable, makes for better policy, and a better future.

            But for disagreement to be productive, it is necessary that the persons, or parties, not see themselves as separate camps, but as united in allegiance toward a common ideal.

            What we have evolved, though, in our politics over the last few decades is a politics of us and them, or rather us versus them.  When they win it’s a tragedy that augers the destruction of all we hold sacred.  And very often that is exactly what we get because the other side is convinced that we hate what they love and need to put down our initiatives decisively.  When we win, it’s our responsibility to seize the opportunity to usher in every policy goal we can conceive as quickly and permanently as we can make it.  And nevermind that 49% of the population disagrees because clearly they don’t know what’s good for them, or they’re ignorant, or deluded, or bigots.  “They aren’t the real America” is a phrase that the conservative politicians more often use against the left, but who do the left think is the “real” America?

            While we think this way, we will remain trapped in a politics of anxiety.  Remember that list from earlier?  Excessive fear or worry, sweating, trembling, shaking, a sense of impending danger, panic, or doom?  You’re not wrong to feel that way.  That is the appropriate response to the politics that we have created for ourselves.  But I want you to consider that the people voting for the other side are feeling the same way.

            This is what we do to ourselves when we treat the people who disagree with us not as people with a helpfully different point of view, but as simply wrong.  Not with concerns we hadn’t thought of and should consider, but as fools best ignored.  Not as rational opposition but as simple “haters”.  Not with legitimate hopes and needs, just as we have, though different from ours, but as children who don’t know what’s good for them and who need our superior education and moral sense to show them the way.  The politics of anxiety that turns every election into a horrorshow comes because we treat those who disagree with us not as citizens of these one United States, but as enemies within.

            The way we talk about each other!  The insults.  The demonization.  The implied violence.  The dismissiveness.  The name-calling.  The patronizing tone.  The elitist sneer.  Catastrophizing.  Extremism.  Apocalyptic visions.  Danger signs blinking!

            I don’t mean them.  I mean us.  All of us.  My mailbox is filled with flyers for local elections filled with accusations and warnings and othering of the opposing candidate.  And these are all Democrats.

            I’m not naïve.  There are despicable and dangerous people among us.  Some of them running for office.  Some of them already in office.  Those folks should be called out and kept as far away from the levers of power as we can keep them.  But I’m not willing to stain 49% of the country with that brush.  And when we do, we push the folks who could be invited to work with us further into the clutches of what we fear.

            On Tuesday there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.  And I’m tired of it.  I can’t take it any more.

            I want, on Wednesday, but why not start today, to begin building us back toward a politics where one side can win an election without the other side feeling that all hope is lost.  It ought to be OK to let the other side earn power for a little while, to present their ideas, to have a reasonable discussion where the minority party softens the most extreme parts of the proposal, and then we enact the policy, give it a test, hope for success, and trust that failure can be corrected.

            We build back that politics by building back our sense of citizenry.  We end the battle of the ballot box, by replacing civil war with civility.

            I can’t do much about what happens in Washington.  I will vote.  And then, with the rest of us I will suffer or succeed, do what I can to protect those most vulnerable and care for those most hurt, and work to claw back whatever rights and freedoms might be lost.

            But I don’t imagine that our national politics will be anything but ugly until we address the ugliness in our national community.  I don’t mean the ugliness in our candidates, because there will always be narcissists, despots, and fear-mongers among us seeking power.  I mean the ugliness we have nurtured in our national culture that permits 49% of Americans to cheer that kind of candidate, or hold their nose and vote for that candidate any way.

How do we change the culture?  Slowly, of course.  Which is why Tuesday is both extremely consequential and also merely a moment on a much longer arc.  And we can’t change the culture alone.  The culture is all of us.  But the culture does change one by one.  Starting with me.  I cannot enact national policy, or by myself elect better leaders, but I can watch my own behavior and monitor my own thinking about my fellow citizens.

            You remember the slogan of the French Revolution:  liberty, equality, fraternity?  Here is the slogan I think we need in twenty-first century America:  Reality, Empathy, Humility.

            Reality.  We need the truth, friends.  We need the facts.  Our spirits are buried in lies and misinformation shoveled on us by those who benefit from our confusion and those who would simply sow chaos for its own sake.  I embrace reality.  I will see the world the way it is.  I will seek out and support objective sources of information.  I will not indulge my dark fantasies or my rose-colored dreams.  I will read and listen carefully, and judge thoughtfully.  I will not spread falsehoods simply because they comfort me, or justify my lies as half-truths.  I will be my authentic self and I will strive to experience others as they really are.  I will not project my prejudices on people I don’t bother to really know.  I will let them speak for themselves and listen curiously so I hear correctly and know them accurately.

            Empathy.  I embrace empathy.  I will open my heart to others.  I will take seriously the suffering and fears of people who are not like me.  I will judge behaviors, but not people.  I will seek to understand the unmet needs that cause people to act differently than I would have them act.  I will honor feelings I don’t share.  I will sympathize with people that carry pains of a past I didn’t experience and anxieties for a future I don’t see.  I will bind the successes or failures of others to my own success or failure.  That’s Universalism.

            Humility.  I will remember that like all human beings I am not all wise, or all good, or all powerful.  I am often wrong.  And my best ideas can be made better when I include the critique of others.  My vision is narrow.  My imagination is bounded.  I am plagued by self-interest and disregard of strangers.  My motivations are seldom pure.  And I cannot make the best happen simply because I wish it were so.  Sometimes I’m not the right man for the job.

            I know how badly you all want the election to go a particular way.  I do, too.  I have a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator I long to open.  And beyond the national election there are many important choices to be made at the state and local level.

But whether or not it’s my side that gets to pop the cork Tuesday evening, I hope to receive the results with grace, and wish that all of us would do so:  candidates and voters; my fellow citizens.  It won’t happen this Tuesday, I’m sure, we’re too caught up in the politics of anxiety not to feel relief or despair.  But I hope this election begins a cultural shift where we will see ourselves, Red and Blue, not as opposing armies, but as a nation wed together, for better or worse, not as winners and losers but as players in different positions on a single team making a communal choice.

To heal our broken politics, we must heal our broken polis.  Vote Tuesday.  The great work begins Wednesday.