Laughing, smirking and gloating over the mistakes of others? Let’s not do that. It will bite us in the butt faster than anything else. Plus we won’t see it coming, of course, being attacked from behind.
Think a bad-apple cop deserved to be killed? Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. Think an honorable cop deserved to be shot because of something a bad-apple cop did? Definitely not.
Either way, when we need a cop to come to our own defense, better be glad there might be a handful of them still available. Whether we like them or not, nobody else is going to put their lives on the line for any of us, with the noble exception of a firefighter risking his neck during a fire or performing an urban rescue. This is even true if one of us happens to be a dummkopf who brought his troubles on himself. No one else puts their life on the line the way a peace officer does every time he or she leaves the house.
And now on to politics
The previous was the social scene, or rather, part of it. On the political scene, I’ve listened for years to Republicans tearing apart the Democratic Party, usually over just one plank in the platform. So who did they get for having ignored the needs of the people for decades? Donald Trump, the most disgusting and dangerous bigot who ever came down the pike.
Could the elephants have picked a more ironic location than Cleveland’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, advertised as the Quicken Loans Arena? The man is unstable and unspeakably unfit to be President. He will start a nuclear war over some tiny insult because he has no anger management skills, not one ounce of compassion for anyone or anything, and zero enlightenment. If you think he’s the man, though, go ahead and elect him. Maybe he can knock some sense into the Establishment.
Then I’ve watched the Democrats smirking and snickering over the chaos at the RNC last month. So what do the donkeys have since their own dirty laundry was aired in the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection? After the event at the Wells Fargo Center, they have a split party at best with Sanders’ supporters behaving at the crybaby level themselves. You can’t get what you want from the outside, people! You’ve got to support your man on the inside and help him get what you all need from Clinton’s administration.
Personally, I’m glad Clinton has broken the glass ceiling for women but…she seems to have a track record of lying. Hmmm. Anybody old enough to remember a Republican named Nixon in the White House? Maybe we’re not so safe with Hillary in the White House but who knows? We have a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, perhaps.
A mighty stink in the land
Political scheming from the entrenched powers of both major parties leaves a mighty stink in the land. Let’s hose off our boots from having had to step in the muck of both sides. And pray there will actually be an election in November. The alternative is a Constitutional crisis, the likes of which this nation has never experienced. However, only the naïve will be surprised at anything else that is revealed, since earlier scandals have already shown a glimpse of what goes on behind political doors. Any closed doors.
We are living in never-before-seen times and we cannot laugh, smirk and gloat over the mistakes of others. However, we are mandated to think – instead of spewing the vitriolic soup du jour on Facebook – and think with an open mind and an open heart. It doesn’t matter how your parents and grandparents always voted. It doesn’t. We need to think, please, before we are all flushed downstream.
The escape clause for your mental state in this whole mess is to remember the qualified write-in candidates, if you can’t stomach either one of the other two. You’ll have to wait for your county to update the list of qualified write-in candidates sometime before November 8, 2016.
Does it even matter that we vote?
There’s a fascinating article on the often infuriating Electoral College and how they can and do reverse the will of the people when it comes to who is elected President. But READ TO THE VERY END. It explains why we should vote anyway and hold on to our freedom to do so! If anyone is completely uninformed, maybe they should stay home but that’s the coward’s way out. It’s easy to absorb at least some of what’s being said and written out there.
Truly, it doesn’t matter who is elected President because his/her hands will be tied by those running things behind the scenes anyway. The day after the presidential election, our lives will likely go on as usual. All the other positions on our ballots are far more important to our daily existence and we cannot laugh, smirk or gloat over anyone else’s mistakes. If they screw up, we must vote them out next time or demand a recall. Then we demand justice from our criminal system, especially when they have allowed other people to be horribly mistreated, even murdered. But we need to vote.