The most serious issue with Donald is not his bullish personality – a lot of that is for effect. It isn’t that he lies a lot – Brian Williams did, too, fortunately not when he was broadcasting the news. It isn’t Donald’s ego – although his ego is a candidate for the largest ego in the Guinness Book of Records. The most serious issue with Donald is his promotion of our base instincts: fear, prejudice, moral abuse, violence, and blatant favoritism – just to name a few.
At last, some voters have begun to recognize Donald’s dark side: a person with no scruples, no ethic, and no morality. He says it himself, “I don’t like to lose; I only win.” And we only will lose. One perceives that the Constitution, the Congress, the Supreme Court and the fifty States will temper his rash decisions. Even if that were so, our nation would throw away four years that are badly needed right now. If ever this country needed leadership, it’s needed now. The election in 2016 is far more important than a typical presidential election. The entire planet stands on the threshold of an unknown future. How we live together will be better or just as easily will be worse than we live together today. The world is shorthanded of forward looking statesmen.
Metaphorically, to walk amid the fallen US government is tantamount to walking through burning Atlanta during the Civil War. Federal and state governments are dysfunctional, crooked, and misanthropic. Do not discount this opinion because the reader suspects mariner may be speaking as Amos. Many wise authors and analysts from several lifestyles fear a misstep in handling the rapidly approaching issues of our future. One can imagine our current society looking like a bunch of loose dogs running about with no cohesive belief in who we are or what we stand for – future or past – and when we organize, we behave just like a pack of wild dogs.
There are some exciting frontiers waiting for us to implement them. The definition of work will begin morphing into something more pleasant if we just focused on that task. Freedom from 19th century ideas about travel, power grids, and food distribution is out there waiting for us to step forward. If we had the fortitude to make health and medicine functional at a fair price, millions of people may live better and have a dollar or two to spare instead of crashing into bankruptcy and despair. Restructuring the role of corporate profit and taxes on everyone will make untold wealth available for reshaping our future to be a pleasant experience.
The mariner is old enough to remember a better culture that existed before 1980. He misses that time. It wasn’t perfect, no culture is, but the nation defined itself by its common citizens. Comparatively, those were the good times.
The 2016 election is an historic moment in our history. Consider the ballot, from top to bottom, with one thought in mind: Will this public official lead us into a new era. If you have doubts, do not vote for that person.
Ancient Mariner
I love the positive aspects of this post–how we can have a better future if we just plan ways to achieve it. We are smart enough to do it. The difficulty may be mostly, if not entirely, political. I agree that we can’t afford to retrain and re-educate Donald for four years–if he is even trainable. I think a major problem is that Donald makes the other Republican candidates look like a moderate choice and they are not moderate.
Your editor could not have said it better.