Most worrying, though, is that most people in everyday life don’t even have that flicker of recognition that you would expect when they see my name. For all of the rancor of the election, for the inescapable news coverage, a surprising number of people don’t even know who Mike Pence, the soulless politician, even is. They don’t chuckle when I explain that I am, as I have become accustomed to saying, the “good Mike Pence.” This surely includes some people who voted for the guy’s running mate for president.
While I do mourn the lost opportunities to exchange witticisms with my programmer friends on Twitter, my notifications now being overwhelmed with political sentiments and assertions that Trump and Pence’s ascent to power is the will of God himself, I can only look at my misfortune as opportunity, since having come to be known as the Other Mike Pence due to some viral posts, I suddenly have a large audience of followers.
There will come a day to explain all of this to my now year-and-a-half-old grandson: that when despotism and white Christian supremacy again threatened our very society’s core, there was an opportunity to raise my voice above the din, if only by the unfortunate coincidence of shared naming. How could I say anything to him except that I proudly put my fist in the air and proclaimed that I am not that Mike Pence, but I am the other Mike Pence, the one who values freedom and civil rights for all?
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