Voting Ensures Our Voice in Bending the Arc of the Moral Universe Toward Justice

Dr. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. often preached that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Change, he asserted, takes a long time, but if we stay committed for the long-haul, we can bring it about.

I believe that King envisioned the path toward justice as an arc rather than as a straight line because progressive social change historically has not resembled a linear line forward, but rather, change is primarily circuitous advancing and retreating and circulating around again.

So, I add an amendment to King’s noble arc of justice by imagining change as a coil, like the old slinky toy laid out on its side. I see moral progress revolving like this coil stretched out, advancing up and forward, then circling down and back, though not as far back as it began most times, until it starts its upward forward motion once again.

Unfortunately, at certain moments in history, the noble arc or coil seems only to retreat and back up many cycles upon itself until some or much of the previous forward movement has become undone. Even at these times, though, the groundwork has already been laid for a return to progress once again.

As researchers have found, hate can feel good. Hate can give people a sense of righteousness that can invigorate powerful neurological and psychological reactions and can bond people together with a sense of “us v. them,” solidarity and division. These rewards are often temporary and come with longer personal and societal harm.

As insightfully reflected by Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, “The opposite of hate is not love, it’s indifference,” or apathy.

He said that both hate and love are passionate high-energy emotions that require powerful emotional investment, concentration, and connection to another person, group, or country. Indifference or apathy, on the other hand, involves a complete lack of feeling, a sense of detachment, and an absence of concern or care.

We now find ourselves at an inflection point, an era of regression regarding King’s moral arc of the universe. Resistance to the divisions and hatred fanning this regression also requires resistance to the indifference.

Preeminent historians, theorists, groups and organizations, and individual personal voices are resisting the indifference to the backward tide by giving insight about ways to return again on track to personal and national liberation.

The 2000 Presidential Election

For the cynics, I ask you to imagine the following scenario in a non-so-distant past close presidential election:

I often wonder how history would have been different if Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election over George W. Bush. Would we have invaded Iraq, what turned out as a misguided and disastrous venture that resulted in the death of over 4,000 U.S. military personnel and severe injuries to thousands more, and the expenditure of trillions of tax dollars wasted needlessly?

Add to this the deaths and injuries to literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, plus the political destabilization of the entire Middle East giving rise to radical terrorist groups including those supported by Iran.

At home under the Bush administration, we witnessed a gradual loosening of governmental regulations on Wall Street and the housing industry, which set the stage for the biggest downturn in domestic and international economies since the Great Depression.

Consider where we would be and the different outcomes if Al Gore had defeated George W. Bush in the Electoral College count (though he did prevail in the overall number of individual votes), and Congress had significant Democratic majorities.

Let us suppose that Gore, a high-profile climate activist, would have pushed Congress to develop green technologies at greater rates with substantial budgetary increases. He most likely would have advocated for retraining programs of workers in the mining and natural gas and oil industries whose jobs would change in the developing renewable energy economy.

As a leader in these technologies, we could impact the world by sharing our advancements as other countries would share theirs with us. Possibly, we now would be living in a world in which we all would breathe a bit more easily, drink cleaner water, and where the weather extremes might not be as great as they are today.

President Gore would also view reports from our intelligence agencies with an open mind and not merely dismiss accounts that did not accord with his political agendas. He most likely would not have invaded Iraq as did the Bush II administration under the guise of confiscating Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” which were never fully confirmed by the information he had at the time and following the invasion.

By not invading Iraq, Gore would have spared the lives of an estimated 150,000 to 1,033,000 people, including more than 100,000 civilians, and thousands of U.S. and NATO military personnel. This does not include the many more who received serious injuries and those who took their own lives once they returned home.

For those who are considering voting for a minor third-party candidate during the 2026 mid-term elections, you might want to consider the example of the 2000 presidential election between Gore and Bush, and Green Party candidate, Ralph Nader.

That year, many progressives wanted to vote for their preferred candidate, Nader, and, thereby, maintain their political values. On the other hand, many feared that by voting for Nader, people would in essence be casting their lot with Bush since Nader had as much chance of rising to the presidency as any individual does when purchasing a single ticket and winning a national MegaBucks lottery.

As it turned out, Bush was chosen by the Supreme Court as the vote was so close, particularly in Florida, though Gore won the overall national popular vote.

So, I ask those who voted for Ralph Nader, or those who did not vote at all in 2000, did you really walk away with your integrity intact? Did your vote serve the best interests of the nation?

Now we stand in another crucial election year. For those who are considering not voting because you either don’t believe your vote will matter, or because the candidates don’t conform to your idea of a “perfect” political leader, or you are thinking about voting for a third-party candidate, think again!

These very rationales in 2016, by a mere total of 80,000 people in three states – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – brought our nation to a crisis under the first and then amplified in the second Trump administration.

This resulted in frayed international alliances, needless deaths during the COVID pandemic due to the lies and inaction by the Trump administration, the stripping of reproductive rights and voting rights, the dehumanization all Muslims and of immigrants from our southern border, and the vilification of transgender people and people from, in Trump’s own words, “shit-hole countries.”

Trump and his cabinet, with massive investments by corporate tech bros, have reversed clean energy sources tax breaks while granting giant tax breaks to the super-rich, and in the second term, the unnecessary international tariffs and invasion of Iran that has raised the prices of basic products and energy costs to unprecedented levels while falling far short of the president’s demented goals.

In addition, the scandals of corruption and grifting seem virtually without end, including failing to release the unredacted Epstein files. Oh, yes, let us not forget the insurrection and attempted coup on January 6, 2021.

So, for anyone thinking of not voting or voting for a third-party candidate this year, I would simply repeat what Sarah Silverman said to the lost Bernie Sanders campaign supporters at the Democratic Presidential Convention in 2016 who promised they would not vote for Hillary Clinton: “You’re being ridiculous!”

Unique and unprecedented social and political conditions have developed, while new strategies of resistance have been developed and employed, and entirely new voices have arisen, all to provide a greater historical context, and to help us maintain and advance further forward across the moral arc of the universe. We are now on a journey of discovery by learning, understanding, and engaging in an active transformation of self and society.

And one primary way we can bring about the change we need to ensure greater equality, equity, justice, and the survival of our democratic union is by voting, using our franchise to voice how we want our country to move toward that promise of “a more perfect union.”