Election Day

It appears this election of 2020 is coming down to the wire. Either candidate may lose the electoral college by just a handful of votes. No doubt, either candidate may sue to change the results or to investigate perceived fraud in the counting process. Either way, it appears we’re looking at a repeat of the election of 2000. This may drag out for weeks. Maybe months.

For my part, I feel the same as a lot of people: let’s just be done already. At the same time, we have to choose between the perceived (and I do mean perceived) lesser of two evils. On the one hand is a perceived bully, a loud-mouthed, insensitive, white supremacist. On the other, a tottering, incoherent, Communist plant. What have we gotten ourselves into??

Anyone can suggest their candidate is “chosen by God” for a variety of moral reasons. In the end, we all have to live with the choice. Hopefully four years from now we can make a wise change or keep things the way they are.

I think there’s more to these elections nowadays than we realize. Society has changed over the decades with technological advances and cultural shifts. What was once not accepted is more tolerated, and vice versa. Then there’s Covid-19 to muck everything up. We are not so united as we’d like to think. Somehow we have to find a middle ground and a mutual understanding without all the vitriol and hate. Both sides hate. Both sides say, “Our way or the highway.” We all know this can’t and won’t work.

President Lincoln said a house divided won’t stand. He was quoting Christ in Scripture, specifically the Gospel of Matthew 12:22-28. In part of his acceptance speech as the U.S. Senate Republican nominee from Illinois, the then future president said,

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently have slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved-I do not expect the house to fall-but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South.”

I think today, more than ever in our history, we need to choose wisely not only our leaders, but a common creed, one which we can all at least agree and tolerate; where individuals aren’t shamed for disagreeing with it, or verbally maligned, or physically attacked. We need to find and respect common ground.

Right now we are a house divided. Whoever ultimately wins the top job hopefully will seek to unite the nation, and not at the expense of the opposite party. Otherwise, our future is dim. What do we want to be in ten, twenty, fifty years? Who will we be? Elections have consequences. Let’s hope ours are good ones.