United or Divided - Countdown 2 weeks

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately”. Benjamin Franklin

For many months now, as both the pandemic and the presidential election were heating up, I’ve wanted to write a series of blog posts sharing my opinion on the state of affairs. On Friday, September 18, I began the six-week countdown to the election, with a list of six topics I wanted to cover. Then life happened and here we are with only two Fridays left before November 3 and I can see that my time is already up.

What can I say to anyone at this point which will change their minds about their candidate? Is that even something I should do, or want to do? How many Americans have voted already and will their ballots even be counted? Or will millions of missing ballots become a scandal which brings our country to war?

This is how many answers I have to the current state of affairs – zero. I have absolutely not a single idea on how to fix things. And here’s the biggest reality – neither presidential candidate has any idea either. All the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate knows is what their respective party leaders tells them.

Here’s what I want to ask those political party leaders – the people behind the scenes, who have all the power and money, who are calling the shots, but no one quite knows who they are – the people who actually picked the two choices we have for president. Does anyone out there anywhere in the United States really think that these two men are the best options available? That there aren’t at least a thousand small-town mayors, firefighters, physicians or factory workers in these fifty states who are more qualified, more eloquent, more educated and more diplomatic than the two candidates who will get 98% of our votes?

(If you read my October 2 post, you may realize that I abhor the two-party system. There needs to be more options than what has become the far right and the far left.)

I hate sounding like some whack-a-doodle conspiracy theorist. But doesn’t anyone else wonder what is going on in this country? How it started and why? And why our leaders don’t seem to want to fix the problem, but instead just want to make things worse?

I know the quote above by the great Benjamin Franklin was written in a different context, but just think about it. We need to pull it together, come together, work together. And stop pulling ourselves apart.

Because “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” as Abraham Lincoln said before the Civil War.

Or maybe the younger generation rather hear from Albus Dumbledore. “We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.” (J.K. Rowling)

And my final quote, “God bless us, every one.”