Gongol.com Archives: November 2024

Brian Gongol


November 5, 2024

The United States of America Vote like your great-great-grandma is watching

You don't have to vote like her -- she might have had some pretty bad opinions. But vote like she's watching over your shoulder, and in a way that ought to make her proud. A great-great-grandmother is sufficiently far removed from the present generation that most of us never knew our own. But it's also close enough that she probably loved someone who loved you. There are exceptions, of course, but few things are more generally true than that it is hard to exceed the love of a mother for her child. It's also true that a matrilineal chain is the one genetic bond that can't be faked: A mother knows with absolute certainty whether she gave birth to her own child. So your (matrilineal) great-great-grandmother almost assuredly cared at least a little bit about the world you would occupy, even if she never knew you.


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