My Confession

Steve S
The Runner's Nod
Published in
5 min readNov 9, 2016

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I couldn’t sleep last night. I watched in agony as the results of the election trickled in. By 11:00 pm I knew it was over. I tried to force myself to do something else. Reading, watching television, or texting with random people who I know would be in the same frame of mind. The only proper adjective was horrified. I knew the sun would come up this morning but I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

I woke in the morning, with that same pit in my stomach, I went for a run. I went running on my sore legs, still recovering from the New York City Marathon, to try to wash away this lasting feeling of dirt. All the happiness from the Marathon has been drained from me today. But the run does allow me to clear my head from the clutter. I can feel the tendinitis in my ankle but I keep thinking about the agony of seeing those headlines of what happened on November 8, 2016. During the run my mind keeps bouncing around for people to blame. I can’t figure out how this happened. How could everyone have been so wrong about this? I thought about the media, the FBI, Jill Stein , Bernie Sanders, the Republican Party, Hillary Clinton and all the other white noise that had been telling the story of this election for the past two years. But then in the midst of the sweat, the relatively warm November air and overcast sky, it dawned on me — the blood is on my hands. If I am going to blame anyone, I have to start with myself.

I am a white, thirty-six year old straight Christian male, living in New York City with a college education, a professional degree and an upper middle class salary. I have spent the last thirty-six years doing the standard stereotypical male things. I watched the NFL and baseball and every sport that allowed its participants to do horrible tings. I listened to Howard Stern and laughed at the misogyny and the other cruel observations he (and our President elect) made about the world. I have sat in offices and conference rooms with guys with Brooks Brother ties and gray hair, listening to them say awful things about women and minorities. I also attended a church that doesn’t afford women the same rights as men. I always qualified or provided an explanation for my participation in of the above referenced activities. It was entertainment, its tradition and its no big deal with these old guys. I would explain why it wasn’t my endorsement of that behavior or culture and ultimately I treated the women in my life with nothing but respect.

But I was wrong. Whatever qualifier or disclaimer I attached to it, I was supporting something that was never funny. And now it has culminated in being part of a culture that let a misogynist get elected to the highest office by using fascist, white nationalist rhetoric. More bluntly, we elected the guy who used the Nazi playbook and that isn’t hyperbole. We also handed him a legislative body full of people who didn’t have the courage to stand up or defy him for the past ten months and the ability to fill one or more lifetime positions on the other branch of government. This is an unmitigated disaster that will have long term implications. I was “with Her” and I did not vote for him but I am part of the culture that helped create him. I was part of the demographic that excused his patent deficiencies as a man for the past thirty years he existed in the zeitgeist. My existential crisis is now at hand and it may be our existential crisis before it is all over.

This goes further than politics. This isn’t about one party over another. This wasn’t about my taxes, roads or schools. In 2008 we took a giant human step and elected a man who promised hope and change. And people can argue whether he delivered that (he did), but the one thing that can’t be denied is that Barack Obama brought humanity, grace and dignity back into our culture. I thought we showed the progress that we had been striving for since the 1960s or maybe even the 1860s. I believed that the America of my adult life would evolve and grow into something more than the white washed and stale version of the 1950s that some people seem to idealize. But somehow the bigots crept out of their holes and found a way to undermine everything that has happened in the last eight years.

The one thing I can say is POTUS has made me look in the mirror a little more carefully. And I need to do more introspection going forward. I need to start looking at those things I willfully ignored or indirectly endorsed in order to start making changes. And those changes go further than my voting preferences. That means holding myself accountable in all respects. I need to hold professional sports leagues accountable for the way they allow their players to treat women. I need to understand that maybe Howard Stern’s culture was toxic because, despite the comedic intent, it allowed people to believe their hatred and ignorance were justified. That means I have to stop consuming those things that require me to qualify any part of my humanity.

I think there is a cultural battle going on and I can’t be myopic about it. It’s not just about what happens in DC. It is what happens every day in our lives. I can’t just smile and call myself a liberal or feminist and believe everything will fall into line. My power lies within my demographic and changing it starts at the most basic level. I need to start changing myself within that culture and rejecting the things that I know are wrong. I need to make it known that I find it inappropriate when one of these white-haired bosses makes some sexual or demeaning remark about a woman. I need to start realizing where diversity is lacking in my world and how that makes me lesser of a person.I can’t tolerate these things anymore because indifference is essentially collaboration when you are stained by white nationalism.

We have been willfully ignorant of the anger of the world around us, instead of just saying I can’t tolerate that. It is time to stop using my nieces or my parents former immigration status as the reason I dislike something. I abhor racism and sexism because it is objectively wrong, without any context. What happened last night was a sign that I can’t be passive to the wrongs I see on a day to day basis.

I realize this has little to do with running but for me it does. Running helps me get the kind of clarity I need to organize my thoughts in this way. Not to just react but to process and formulate when things are happening in my world.

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Steve S
The Runner's Nod

Writing and running…in no particular order.