Engineered Eloquence

On Using Your Voice

Key takeaways:

On the eve of this website's domain renewal, coupled with my 39th birthday, a contentious Wisconsin election, and a renewed interest in helping others (namely, my father and Nash) update their websites, I was kept up one night asking myself "why have a voice, if you're not going to use it?"

Over Spring Break, I spent time with my wife’s family in Colorado. Her parents are long-term Republicans (perhaps always have been), but I’ve now been an observer of the family dynamics for over 20 years. The amount of time I’ve spent with the family was a surprising realization and something that got me thinking about my role within it.

My father was always “separate” in my mother’s family, not having the same expectations laid upon him by my uncle and his family as were laid on my mother; I suppose I took on the same role. I support my wife through debriefing sessions and as a sounding board after family gatherings, but I’ve rarely seen myself as a direct actor in the nuclear family dynamic. At the same time, I am otherwise outspoken, so I often spend my portion of the debriefing sessions discussing all the times I kept my mouth shut.

But as time passes, as it does with age, I’ve felt it becoming harder to keep my mouth shut, especially when the outcomes may directly or indirectly affect my children. Perhaps that's why I started this post with the background that my in-laws are long-term Republicans, but politics are not a topic that the family discusses openly very often, even less so the topics that undergird this particular election: reproductive autonomy, voting rights and districting, and money in politics, among the other less discussed differences in the liberal and conservative mindsets of 2025.

As we drove home from Colorado, the election on Tuesday (tomorrow) consumed me; my lack of speaking up had finally reached a breaking point in my mind, in which the Supreme Court race could have lasting effects on the state of Wisconsin, the lives of my children, and—both directly and indirectly—my own life. The fact that Elon Musk is trying to buy a non-partisan Wisconsin state election is deeply troubling to me, especially given his moves to dismantle the government otherwise, but I hadn't taken the opportunity to discuss it at all during vacation.

So I texted them. Maybe it won't make a difference, but it was something. And perhaps this post is just another thing that won't make a difference, but it is a way to use my voice. I believe that the government exists to serve the people and that it is not currently doing that effectively. I believe that the people should have more power to call the government out in these situations, even take a vote of no confidence when things start to go awry. And I believe that we cannot continue to allow the blatant disregard for human life that is currently happening with the current administration.

The Judiciary is the thing that currently stands between us and utter chaos, unchecked power; I hope that when tomorrow comes, Wisconsin is still in a position to fight against that.