Ohio (‘24)—Damien Jurado
#365Songs: October 22nd
Those who will decide this election are listening. They still hear you. Be kind to them, stay calm. Don’t call them deplorables, don’t provoke them. Just remind them that what’s at stake is everything that matters. There’s still hope, even if fleeting, that those willing to unlearn can still do the right thing.
Out from my window across from the city
I have what’s considered a good view
Two blocks from the subway, three from the fountain
Where I walk to break in new shoes
The distance between my childhood and the present day is never more clear than during an election year, when my home state becomes the center of attention.
Ohio didn’t change, I did.
Perhaps on paper what was once a swing state has gone bloodstain-red in recent years, but from my vantage point it’s always been excessively conservative, traditional, and patriarchal. Without Ohio, there is no MAGA. It would’ve died as fast as the watered down Tea Party from 2008, the precursor party that wasn’t bold enough to tap the right vein.
She stands on the sidewalk just waving at taxis
Like horses in parades in passing
I ask where she’s headed she tells me
Ohio, I’ve not seen my mother in ages
It’s been a long time, a real long time
A real long time
A real long time
I used to believe a lot of crazy things. Even as the books I read opened the world, my childhood in Ohio was filtered through a MAGA lens long before we knew that term, a belief that ‘what was’ is better than ‘what is,’ that change is bad, that progress is a direct threat to tradition, that being queer is a sin, that loving someone of a different skin tone was unnatural, that hard work was only done by White men, that God was America and America was God, that strangers were a threat, that cities were dangerous, that abortion was murder, that murder was ok when it fits the “good versus evil” structure of law and order, that centering your life around family was far more important than curiosity and ambition, and on and on and on. I believed all of it because it’s all I knew.
It took me so many years to unlearn what Ohio taught me, so many miles across America, living from Coast to Coast, getting to know people I was indoctrinated to fear.
Out from my window “How far is Ohio?”
She laughed and pointed out east
She said, I grew up there with my dear mother
And I haven’t seen her since thirteen
According to Salon, a common Google search looks something like this: “Can my husband find out who I am voting for in the Presidential Election?” More concerning, they went on to quote a male poll worker, who said, “As a poll worker, I have had to deal with husbands and fathers who want to join their wives or daughters in the voting booth to ‘make sure they vote the right way.’”
Vote the right way, they say. The RIGHT way, which means not the LEFT way.
Yes, that’s fucked up. Yes, that’s terrifying. But beyond that, it’s a disturbing reminder that this is what MAGA stands for: strong-presenting White male cowards who lean on normalized displays of excessive masculinity to dominate anyone who threatens their fragile way of life, as they collectively yearn for the days when women were subservient sexual objects for pleasure and domestic duty, and who deserve lesser rights.
Over 20 years ago, my MAGA-loving Catholic cousin said, in her vows, that she promises to be subservient to her husband while in his vows he promised to be a strong, protective force. What might feel like caveman shit to us is still an acceptable way of life for far too many Americans — particularly in the States that’ll swing this election. I mention my cousin because she’s also the “locker room talk, “men just being men” crowd that normalized Trump to begin with, the ones who gathered with their more thoughtful peers and encouraged them against their better instincts in 2016 to quietly poke the Trump hole on the ballot.
My cousin is hopeless, but her peers are not. They’re the ones typing the Google queries, the ones who will vote alone, looking over their shoulders, tortured by the decision between what’s right for her versus what’s right for him. This election will be decided by those voters, the ones whose conscience is at odds with their community, those most likely to suffer more as a result of a Trump victory.
It’s our job to be the counter to my cousin, to remind them that it’s okay to question your prior beliefs, okay to get into a voting booth and do the opposite of what people expect from you. It’s okay to question your own morality, ethics. We’ve all been a little bit abducted these past years, shaken up and left to ponder everything around us.
You see, I was taken while she lay sleeping
By my father’s hired man
We moved to city so far from my family
I haven’t been back there since
It’s been a long time, a real long time
A real long time
A real long time
I miss my Mother every single day, no less now than when she passed almost 15 years ago, and yet I wonder today who she’d be now if she were still here. Over the unlearning years, I challenged her often, tried different tactics to open her mind, to help her see a different way. And every time I felt progress I’d see her revert when in front of the extended family, watching as her traditional values stunted her potential for growth.
She would’ve hated how Trump talks, the way he bullies, but she would’ve loved his faux Christianity, his nod to the past, his belief that a White-centric world was the safest way forward. Though my Dad remains a Blue-blooded Democrat, he’s always stood alone as the only non-bully, the one whose opinion impacted her family stature least. The collective voices of every family member past and present would’ve been in that voting booth with her, drowning me out, watching her shaking fingers waver from one candidate to the next.
My Mom was Ohio; Ohio was my Mom. The only place she knew, the ideology that raised her. Her life was lived in a ten-mile radius, from birth to death, raised to only trust what she knew at the expense of everything else.
But would she have been MAGA? Even if she knew what was at stake? If I could’ve personalized the election through women’s rights, my relationship to queerness, the threat to her three-quarters Jewish grandson? Would she, in 2024, still vote for Trump?
Perhaps. She lived in Ohio, after all.
But what gives me hope is that I still question this at all, after all these years, despite my lowest expectations. That, even for a second, I could still imagine her — in the privacy of that voting booth — voting against Trump.
Out from my window please hear me Ohio
Your daughter wants to come home
She longs to be with you to hug you to kiss you
To never leave her alone
And I’ve gotten know her to live with to love her
It’s hard to see her leave
She belongs to her mother and the state of Ohio
I wish she belonged to me
See you sometime, see you sometime
See you sometime, see you sometime
~
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