We Need To Dance In The Streets

We won.

Say it out loud. Don’t whisper it. Don’t hedge it. On November 3, the people of this country went to the polls and spoke. They said enough. They said it in red states and blue states and every shade in between. And the count came back clear.

So why are we still walking around with our heads down?

I have watched it all week. People are relieved, but they are quiet about it. They smile a little and then look over their shoulder. They say “we’ll see” and “don’t get your hopes up” and “it’s not over yet.” They talk like folks who lost.

We did not lose. We won. And it is time we acted like it.

Here is what I have learned in a long life. A bully does not run on muscle. He runs on fear. He needs you nervous. He needs you tired. He needs you to believe nothing you do will ever matter. As long as you feel beat, he does not have to beat you. You do his work for him.

That is why the noise has not stopped. You have noticed it. Since the vote came in, the shouting has gotten louder, not softer. More threats. More warnings. More talk about how bad things are going to get. That is not strength. That is a man who just watched the room turn on him, and he is trying to scare everybody back into their seats.

Don’t sit down.

There is one thing a bully cannot stand to see. It is not anger. He feeds on anger. He loves it when you yell back, because then it’s a fight, and he knows how to fight. What he cannot stand is joy. He cannot stand people laughing, dancing, singing and celebrating like he doesn’t even matter. Joy tells him his fear has stopped working. Joy takes his oxygen away.

So let’s take it.

I am not talking about one night. I am talking about from today forward. A celebration that does not quit. Every day we wake up and remember what we did together, and we let the whole world see it on our faces.

Now, somebody is going to tell you to calm down. Somebody always does. They will say be careful, be patient, go slow, don’t make waves. Some of them mean well. But listen close to that advice. Caution is a cage, too. It keeps people small. It keeps them quiet. And a quiet people is exactly what the other side wants.

We have been careful long enough. We have been patient long enough. We earned this. Every person who stood in line, every person who drove a neighbor to the polls, every poll worker who stayed late counting, earned this. You do not apologize for a win you worked for.

Think about where things stand now. The man at the top just lost his Congress. For the next two years he sits in a golden cage. He can still rattle the bars. He can still make noise. But the keys are not in his pocket anymore. The people took them back.

That is worth a party.

So what does the party look like? It is simpler than you think.

It looks like turning off the outrage. Stop sharing their posts. Stop quoting their worst lines. Stop clicking on the headlines built to make your blood boil. Every share is a breath of air for them. Every scroll past is one less breath. You do not have to argue with the noise. You just have to stop feeding it.

It looks like filling the space with something better. Post a win. Post your neighbor’s garden. Post the kids at the ballgame. Post a thank you to a poll worker. The machines that run our feeds push whatever is moving. So give them joy to push. Drown the fear in so much good news that the fear can’t find a seat.

It looks like showing up. Go to the town meeting. Go to the school board. Shake hands with the folks who won and tell them, “We voted for change. Now deliver it.” Fear does well on a screen. It does poorly in a room full of neighbors who know each other’s names.

It looks like one voice. Not a hundred different messages. One line, said by all of us, over and over, until it is the loudest thing in the country. The people spoke. Enough is enough.

And yes, it looks like dancing. Real dancing. Block parties. Porch music. Potlucks. Kids running around and old folks laughing at them. I mean it. Get out there. Let them see it.

You might think that sounds silly. A party is not a plan, right? But I have been around long enough to know better. Fear is the plan. It always has been. They don’t have to win the argument if they can keep you scared of the next one. Joy breaks that plan clean in half. You cannot scare a crowd that is busy celebrating.

We don’t need to answer cruelty with cruelty. We don’t need to sink to their level to beat them. We already beat them. We did it at the ballot box, the right way, the American way. Now we just have to stop acting like it didn’t happen.

There will be bad days ahead. There always are. They will throw everything they have at us, because a cornered man throws hard. When that happens, don’t flinch. Look at your neighbor. Remember November 3. Remember that we did this together, and we can do it again.

And here’s the best part. This party has an end date, and the end is even better than the middle. Two years from now, we go back to the polls. We finish the job. And when that day comes, we will have the biggest celebration this country has seen in a long time.

But we don’t wait for it. We start now. Today.

So turn the music up. Open the door. Call your neighbor over. Let the kids stay up late. Smile in public like you mean it.

The people spoke.

It’s our time.

Dance in the streets.

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This post was drafted with AI governed assistance and reviewed and directed by Michael S. Faust Sr. before publication.

” Attic Thoughts”-library – Intelligent People Assume Nothing