It’s a bit of a reach to make a metaphor out of a favorite Christmas Carol. I hope you’ll stick with me as I try. You know the one that starts, “what child is this who laid to rest . . .”
We play the heck out of this song around the end of December through January. Preachers talk about God humbling himself to be born and spend his first hours sleeping in a feed trough in a stable. I’m not going there this morning.
What child do you want to birth? What is your vision of tomorrow for us? Do you even have a vision? Are you one of those, one of the loud, small minority that can’t think past destruction. Just tear it all down, blow up D.C., kill Congress, kill the President, kidnap and behead our Supreme Court judges? Is that you? What then? What is it you expect once it is all ash and regrets?
It’s a fine thing to light up social media with antagonistic words. Most of the time it goes unnoticed except in our small circle of influence. This isn’t most of the time. We are going to elect a new president this year. Two of the candidates have rabid followings that have already rioted. This is, for me, a “be careful what you ask for” moment. Us, the lunatic fringe, is always around. We are usually background noise. This is not usually.
It didn’t just start with Drump. The Bern is a symptom of this. We are at a tipping point. We’ve had over a century of socialist democracy and it isn’t improving things. We are in more debt than any time in history. We are printing fiat currency that isn’t worth the paper used to printing it at amazing rates. Everything about us is large, loud, dysfunctional. We are sick and a symptom of that is the increasing unrest manifested in rioting and police killings.
We do need change. What we don’t need is to try harder at being socialist-democratic. Nor do we need more authoritarian populism fueled by heated nationalism. Drump is dangerous because he’s uncorked an abscess on our national heart. We’ll either self-correct or spin further out of control as inept leadership with a mandate to feed an addiction to anger drives us to further insanity and chaos.
I like thinking of conflict as fire. It can work for us, warming us up to necessary change. It can also enflame our lives and hurt us. I’m averse to endorsing particular candidates or parties. I think they all suck. I won’t be much help here because I fear the Bern or the Drump. Billary isn’t an improvement. Her rhetoric is the same dreck we’ve heard from populist Social Democrats for a century. She won’t change anything. I’m not much help because I’m only saying what I fear, not what I hope for. If I hope for anything, it is that the heated emotions of this election will wake us up a bit and we’ll do the needful.
We are teaching our politicians how to treat us. It matters who we vote for this November. All I ask is that you vote your heart, regardless of the propaganda or party affiliation. Something will be born as the days roll by and I get closer to crossing the river Styx. I hope it isn’t something we all end up regretting.