Keeping My Priorities Straight

Voting and texting and writing...and editing, too

I’d love to be bringing you some book reviews and tidbits of great writing, but honestly, I can’t really focus on anything beyond the coming election. My Canadian publisher Rebecca Eckler emailed me today to say just what I was thinking—that I need to make it clear, again, that I believe this election is incredibly important, and not just in some normal “I’m voting for my favorite political party” kind of way.

Here’s what she wrote:

Fwd: Friday’s Headlines: Some of Trump’s most senior former advisers warn he could deploy troops against Americans

Saw this article and thought about you and something you *may* want to cover in your Substack. I know you already voted — as I read in your recent article —but maybe you could ask all your sailing friends living on boats about voting “abroad.” (I think it’s fascinating how people who live on boats could/will vote!) 

Hope all is well, and that the honeymoon continues!!! 

Cheers,

Rebecca Eckler
Founder & Publisher

RE:BOOKS

www.rebooks.ca

Yes, Rebecca, I do want to cover this topic again. I do think it is alarming that a former president—who could easily become president again—thinks that it is okay to use our military to wage war against Americans who disagree with him. Not to mention incarcerating/deporting millions of innocent people. And of course depriving people of their most basic rights. If that isn’t scary, then what is?

Obviously, you are all probably hearing the same news I am, and witnessing the same threats to our democracy, so I won’t quote any more news sources, but this week has been particularly tough on me, since the owner of the LA Times refused to allow the editorial board of the newspaper to endorse Kamala Harris, which of course they intended to do. And now the Washington Post is taking the same cowardly stance, in the guise of being “fair.” I don’t think that keeping a newspapers editors from stating their opinions about which candidate they believe would be best is fair. You can read more about both the decisions here. (I wrote a scathing letter to the LA Times and I’ll share it if they print it.)

Of course I voted. Hopefully, you’ve already voted or you have a plan to, if you are a U.S. citizen. So, what can we do beyond voting? Clearly that is the most important step to take, but so is speaking out, talking to your friends, neighbors and followers about what a second presidency for He-Who-will-Not-Be-Named would mean. Just today, I saw a headline on The Bulwark stating that “The Guardrails Are Already Crumpling,” and that worries me. Clearly, any political party who would rally behind that con man has given up all pretense of being “the party of law and order” or the party who cares about “freedom” or individual rights.

What am I doing? Well, I signed up for two different trainings this week, in order to text-bank (yeah, it is like phone-banking, only by text) and I have been texting voters in Colorado, Nevada, California, and other states who still have time to register to vote (Those states all allow voters to register the same day they vote!). At the training yesterday, the question came up if we were just wasting our time, and we were assured that people do reply and ask about registering, and some do actually follow the links we send them about online voter registration. As their logo states: Register Democrats. Save the World.

I’ll also be texting registered voters and reluctant voters to try and get out the vote, all the way up to Election Day. I have friends who have written hundreds of postcards, and those who have called hundreds of people. This is what I can do and so I am doing it. I don’t want to wake up one morning in November and wish I had done more; I lived through that nightmare once already.

I also have some deadlines looming for my “day job” as book editor. I am lucky enough to be editing two Baja books for Sunbelt Publications—including the sequel to Baja Legends by Greg Niemann—so every day I get to escape the madness and go “South of the Border, Down Mexico Way,” at least in my mind.

Hopefully, this week I will have some time in the midst of all this editing and phone-banking and voter texting and news reading and doom scrolling to write up my newest batch of book reviews—I do have some great books to tell you about—for next week’s newsletter.

Meantime, it is back to the text-banking. Keep up the good work, all!

hasta pronto!