Election Day
Finally, this time next week the votes will have been cast and counted and we can all get on with our lives. Never, in my memory, has a national election caused so much angst locally. It is like the Civil War, with family against family and friend against friend. It brings one to wonder just how long it is going to take us to heal the wounds. You know sometime, when wounds run deep, it may appear that they have healed at the surface but underneath they are still gaping. It is unreasonable to believe that on November 9th we will all wake up and everything will be hunky dory. Even here in Jefferson County Tennessee the election sting can be felt.
I, like more than 12,000 Jefferson Countians, cast my vote early, not because I was particularly eager to support any candidate but more because I wasn’t entirely sure that I could convince myself to stand in a long line on Election Day. Usually, I am kind of excited on Election Day and enjoy the process. Not so this year. This year I am ready to move on. Let’s face it. No matter who wins this election, we, the people, have already lost. Don’t get me wrong. I believe that it is time for a change in the political landscape. Things have been progressively going down for years, picking up steam as they go. The establishment on both sides of the aisle are so out of touch with the real lives of everyday people that they might as well be governing from Mars. Perhaps, just perhaps, the upside of this election will be the realization that the general public, the majority, are not as partisan as the establishment. We live here in the real world where compromise and co existence are a part of daily living. We do not have security or expense accounts or million dollar bank accounts. Most of us do not have to worry or think about bribes. We have nothing that anyone wants. Our ethical standards are not a mandate that we try to edge around. They are the code that we live by because faith or family taught us lessons early. Certainly not everyone in politics is looking for a path around ethics and not every citizen tries to lead a clean, good life. The difference is that politicians make policy that the public must adhere to and therefore they should be held to, if not a higher standard, at least the same bar. Not everyone lives in the mean streets of Chicago, some of us live in rural America but we have challenges just the same. It would be nice if someone would remember us, even if our electoral votes don’t count as much as those in other parts of the Country.
Maybe, just maybe, things will change. I don’t know. The only thing that I do know for sure is that on November 9th we are going to wake up and be living in a new world because when something is torn apart it can never be exactly what it was before. Better or Worse? I guess we will all have to wait and see. Like any deep wound, real healing comes from the bottom up. The future of the United States of America really is in the hands of the people. The Washington elite cannot just rub some salve on it and pass it off as healed. And perhaps, for them, that is the scariest thing of all.
Tuesday is Election Day. If you haven’t already, please go vote.
