Chicken or Excrement? Can I Just Have the Taco Salad or Maybe a Bag of Peanuts?

Why It’s Okay to Be an Undecided Voter in October 2016

I am an undecided voter of sorts. I am firmly in the NeverTrump and NeverHillary camps and that will not change, much to the chagrin of many of my friends, some who are trying very hard to pull me one way or the other. My indecision lies not in the binary facade of the two leading candidates, but in whether I am going to cast a vote for any of the other 1800+ presidential candidates in November, write in Peyton Manning’s name or simply abstain from the presidential vote and focus instead on the down-ballot candidates. I have a feeling that I am not alone in my quandaries. If you feel the same, this one’s for you.

A dear friend of mine, one whose intellect I admire and whose genuineness I trust, recently forwarded me the reposted excerpt of a David Sedaris’ article in which Sedaris mocks undecided voters.

excerpt from “Undecided” by David Sedaris, October 27th, 2008 reposted 10/1/2016 by The (Liberal) Voice of Reason

My friend and the Facebook page — The (Liberal) Voice of Reason — from which the post came are decidedly against Trump and are planning on voting for Hillary in November. They clearly identify Donald Trump as the platter of fecal matter from Sedaris’ article. I haven’t determined if my friend is pulling the lever for Clinton because she believes wholeheartedly in her policies, because she figures that Hillary might not be able to fulfill her presidential responsibilities and she secretly wants Tim Kaine for president, or for reasons that are her own. What I do know is that she, like many Americans (myself included), sees Trump as being unfit for public office and fears a Trump presidency would be a disaster for our country. But frankly, and I mean this in the nicest way possible: I don’t care why my friend is voting for Hillary. It is her vote to do with as she wants. Period. End of Story. And I respect that. By the way, I feel the same way about Trump voters. I support those who vote for Trump whether their vote enables him to shake up Washington or whether they think he’s becoming more presidential these days or whether they fear Hillary is the devil incarnate. Whoever you are backing in this election — Gary Johnson, Evan McMullin, Jill Stein or the handful of others depending on the state in which you reside — your vote and motivations are your own, they are sacred, and I am not going to spend time trying to convince you otherwise.

It might seem unusual for me to take a position of indifference on this election, especially when I agree with most people on both sides of the debate that the stakes for our future couldn’t get any higher. And I understand the accusations of isolationism, pessimism and arrogance that are thrown my way. Let me assure you that I am not trying to be an island, or above it all, and I am certainly not just going to sit on the sidelines while everyone else fights for a cause. I have tried again and again and again to explain to my friends and others that I am not protesting, I am not negotiating , I am not calculating, capitulating or hedging my bets; I am not giving up or giving in, I am not picking up my toys and walking away in disgust, and I am certainly no longer playing the binary voting game.

So why am I still an undecided voter so late in this election cycle? Let me try to explain myself one last time, and I will use the Sedaris analogy to explain myself.

Sedaris’ original article appeared in the New Yorker on October 27th, 2008, one week before the presidential election of John McCain and Barack Obama. The article is complicated to say the least. After mocking undecided voters (although it isn’t clear if he is mocking all undecided voters or just the ones in the 2008 election), Sedaris tells a humorous story about how his mom couldn’t decide who to vote for in the 1968 election between Nixon and Humphrey. Ms. Sedaris ends up dragging an eleven-year-old David into the voting booth with her so he can flick the switch while she watches. Sedaris hesitates under the pressure then, just as his mom is reaching to vote for Humphrey, Sedaris chooses Nixon because he remembers (incorrectly he realizes later) that there is someone at church with the last name Nixon. Sedaris then concludes the essay with his “maverick” vote in the 1976 election for Jerry Brown because it was rumored he smoked pot. All that gobbledygook and Sedaris still has the nerve to mock undecided voters?!

Nowhere in any of these seemingly unrelated tales is there any mention of who Sedaris endorsed for the 2008 election, unless you count the aside “Calling yourself a maverick is a sure sign that your not one” as a subtle shot at John McCain (the maverick); but neither is there any indication in the article as to precisely why it is bad to be an undecided voter — just an ambiguous rhetorical question: “I mean, really, what’s there (referring to the two candidates and the upcoming election day of 2008)to be confused about?”

My answer to Sedaris (and by default my friend and the Facebook post that is rehashing the Sedaris article anachronistically) is there is plenty to be confused about, especially if Sedaris is trying to make a political point about the election without naming names (i.e. Is McCain the glass laden excrement and Obama the chicken or vice versa?) Moreover, why does Sedaris regret his maverick vote if his friends and, therefore, Jimmy Carter won that election? Did he want to be on the winning side? Did he want Ford to win? Did he feel he threw his vote away? And why does Sedaris throw his mom under the bus later in the essay if he was just as ignorant/undecided as she was? Questions for another day to be sure.

But much of the same ambiguity left unclarified in the original article can be found in the reposting. The (Liberal) Voice of Reason must think themselves clever for posting what they figured was a scathing comparison of Trump, when in fact many of the reader’s who responded to the post were able to easily dissect the analogy in unexpected ways. Here are the top ten outside-the-box responses (at least as of this writing) in no particular order:

1. Scott Graham: “There’s so little in common between Americans that they can’t agree on which entree is the shit.”
2. Bryan Baruch: “There’s a good chance the chicken is filled with cyanide and will kill you and the shit platter is just there to give you the illusion of choice as your extorted into eating the deadly poisoned chicken. Because both dishes came from the same kitchen. Same cooks.”
3. PG Schrader: “You should order the alternative option. For example, the kosher meal tastes better, is prepared with more care, and is more nutritious. Funny thing, airline passengers are rarely aware that they have more than two options!
4. Melani McReady: “Who is supposed to be the chicken? Gary Johnson or Jill Stein?”
5. Becky Muscat: “Hmmmm, something sure to kill me or something potentially unpleasant. How long is this flight?”
6. David Raphael Israel: “BYOBs are confiscated. But if you don’t like the meal you can deplane in Canada.”
7. Jake Kaufman: “The chicken has GMOs, BTW and bullets in it. And it’s been cooked in fracking chemicals…I’d rather drive I think.”
8. Mark Walls: “Or we could all look up and realize there are other items on the menu and not choose plastic arsenic chicken or shit and realize that we can order a side salad or a light snack meal. If the whole plane does that then the airline will stop providing shit and plastic chicken. You have the power to choice-use it.”
9. John Kennedy: “I refuse to vote for another week and un American coward! Give me them shit and bits.”
10. Sassan Rahbari: “You’re flying at 30,000 ft, scared shitless for your life, and the stewardess asks you if you want shit of chicken. My answer would be FU, just show me where are the parachutes.”

I think these readers are picking apart this argument in very effective ways, but there is even more that can be said of this analogy. In fact, despite of my criticisms of Sedaris’ article, and the oversimplification of the choice perpetuated by the repost, I think chicken-versus-excrement is the perfect analogy for this election. I doesn’t matter to me who is the pile of fecal matter, if they both are or neither. My concern is not what’s for lunch, but where the plane is headed.

As of 2016 we as a nation are trying to: support soldiers fighting overseas in a seemingly endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan; come to a reasonable consensus as to the origins of the terrorism that has caused mass casualties over the past year; determine if we are fighting a potential new war (if and when we make it official) with ISIS; restructure a VA Hospital system which cannot adequately take care of the vets who long ago returned from war and which is woefully under-prepared to care for the vets who are now returning from war; resolve income inequality whether by government or free-market intervention; resolve inner-city violence whether by government or free-market intervention; listen to and try to have a rational conversation with various disparate groups who are demanding to be heard (BLM, Occupy, Ammon Bundy sympathizers, Alt Right, etc.); find the happy compromise between micro-aggressions and free speech; find the happy compromise between LGBTQ rights and freedom of religion; resolve questions of technology and morality, legal and illegal immigration, and what the second amendment does and does not permit; not to mention navigating international trade, TPP, tariffs, a looming recession, unfunded liabilities of over $127 trillion and a national debt of nearly $20 trillion —clearly a serious list of crises that are not easily resolved no matter who the president is. And with all of these problems facing our nation, I think many of us are just starring at a menu overly concerned about what our choices are for lunch. For lunch!

There are probably people out there who find this analogy unfair, or will think that I am taking Sedaris’ point too far. A few weeks ago, I might have listened with open ears, but did you see last Sunday’s debate in St. Louis? Have you listened to the news lately? Do you think the fight in Las Vegas and the run up to the election will be any different?

Can we take a step back for a second? Do we care who is flying this plane? What are the pilot’s credentials? Do we as passengers have a say in where we’re headed? We’re paying for this flight, right? Do we care how much fuel is left in the tank and if there is even enough for us to reach our destination? Does it matter the skill and competency of the mechanics or when the engine was last serviced or how many miles it has left? How did we get so caught up in the spectacle of it all so that lunch is all that seems to matter anymore?

You can make the argument that one candidate is better than the other, that one is a flavorful breast of non-arsenic tainted chicken and the other is really glass encrusted feces. You can even do one better and claim that this is once-in-a-lifetime, miracle-tasting chicken breast and the excrement is from an elephant with a stomach virus and the glass is tainted with Ebola. But even when you convince me which candidate might “taste better,” you have to understand that lunch has never saved a plane from imminent disaster.

And why do I fear we are headed for imminent disaster? Why do I think it no longer matters who wins the election on November 8th? I’ll give you three reasons.

Economics

I think we can all agree that the plane in the analogy is the United States of America. I believe that we the people had a destination in mind when the plane first took off in 1791. I believe that for the most part Congress has been steering us in a reasonable direction since then. I believe that over the years our presidents have acted as both pilots and mechanics (sometimes for good and sometimes for selfish motives, sometimes charting our course for us and sometimes just making sure the plane was running smoothly so we could chart our own course). We could have a debate as to whether Barack Obama has taken us off course or gotten us back on course from a piloting standpoint (but that would have to be a discussion for another day); however, I think that we can all agree that the last two presidents have certainly tinkered substantially with the engine, so much so in fact that there are not many miles left before it will require a complete overhaul.

It is extremely difficult these days to find an unbiased chart that accurately shows debt and deficit spending. Partisan economists will want to say that President George H.W. Bush had to spend the money he did to keep the economy afloat, or that President Obama inherited a poor economy and has done the best he could to get it back on track. The reality is that the president proposes a budget each year to Congress, who then debates the budget and either approves or denies it. After approval, the president still has final veto power over any legislation Congress passes. Were there tough decisions to be made? Certainly. But rather than look to the private sector and individuals to be a part of the solution, both of the past two presidents chose to use government money as the primary means (i.e taxes, borrowing or quantitative easing) to either bail out failing entities or jump start industries in the hopes that such efforts would ripple through the economy.

2008–2009 has been labeled “The Great Recession.” It began with the bursting of an $8 trillion housing bubble and grew until millions had lost their jobs and the stock market was in disarray. The Federal Reserve “solved” this problem by dropping interest rates to historic lows, purchasing the debt of government and non government agencies, and easing the flow of credit for institutions and individuals.

The Obama Administration can claim their quick intervention pulled the economy back from the brink of collapse, which might have otherwise pushed us into another Great Depression. And there are some positive stats to validate their claims of saving and revitalizing the economy: the unemployment rate decreasing since its peak in 2010, housing prices finally returning to their pre-crash highs of 2005, gas prices dropping to reasonable levels and much lower than 2009, and the stock market reaching record highs. Of course wages have stagnated for most of the country, the national debt has ballooned to nearly $20 trillion, and economy has grown at a mediocre 2% average for the past 8 years — and that’s if you give Obama a pass on 2009 (then it would be under 2%)— which is well below the post WWII average of 2.9%.

I want to make it clear that I am not an economist by any stretch of the imagination. I realize that there are myriad ways to twist numbers to make it look like one president’s policies were better for the economy than another president’s, or that one party has a better economic track record than the other, or that Barack Obama has done a pretty good job with the hand he was dealt. But more than six years into the recovery, five sets of questions still linger in the back of my mind:

1. Can we have an honest debate about the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of the 2000s? What would have happened if the Fed had tried a different, more hands off approach to the economic recession of 2008? What would have happened if presidents Hoover and Roosevelt had reacted differently in the months and years after the stock market crash of 1929? What was the effect of the Smoot-Hawley Act on the Great Depression?
2. Why did it take the US over 15 years to recover from the Great Depression, and why did it take Bill Knudsen and private sector ideas to even get us to the point of recovery and less government intrusion to finally stabilize?
3. Why don’t we ever talk about the deeper but short lived recession/depression of 1920 and the subsequent boom that resulted in the roaring 20s? Is it because President Coolidge did something outside conventional wisdom by massively cutting government spending while raising interest rates? Why did Ben Bernanke in 2008 opt for the debt deflation solution from the Great Depression (i.e. dropping interest rates and going all in on bailouts) instead of invoking Calvin Coolidge? Was it a partisan decision or one he truly believed would solve the problem? Is it solving the problem?
4. If the economy is as great as the Obama administration would have us believe, why has the Fed only raised interest rates once (and that by a mere quarter of a percent) since December 2008 when it dropped rates to their lowest levels in history? Why is the Fed still so hesitant to raise rates? What are they afraid will happen if they do?
5. After the $475 billion for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of 2008, the $831 billion for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the $600 billion+ for Quantitative Easing 1 (QE1), the $600 billion for QE2, the $1 trillion + over the course of sixteen months for QE3, (all totaling nearly $4 trillion in acquired assets for the Fed) why is there already talk of QE 4 and an estimated $2–4 trillion of additional stimulus to the economy? Why does the government need to continuously intervene in order to keep the present economy moving? Is the economy on life support and in constantly in danger of lapsing into cardiac arrest? Is there something substantial behind the seeming smoke and mirrors or is it just bubble gum and duct tape holding it all together?

Debating history can become very partisan and I worry that my questions will be disregarded as anti-Democrat or anti-Obama administration. I wish instead that my questions are seen as forthright regardless of party affiliation, and that they stoke the fires of curiosity in honest seekers of truth. Because whether the economy runs in cycles (we are in currently in the 80th month in the 56 month average) or there is more randomness involved, there is reason for concern for the economic future of the United States, or at least in the next four years. With unprecedented debt and less-than-stellar growth, we could easily end up in another recession — especially considering that the longest sustained economic growth of the past two centuries has been 10 years (1991–2001).

How would Hillary react in a recession? She has worked briefly in the private sector, but mostly as a politician or the wife of a politician. She doesn’t have a clue how to effectively run a business or compete in the free market, but she does know how to champion some businesses and demonize others based on her personal philosophy. From her speeches and proposals, it is clear that all she knows is how to raise taxes and spend other people’s money. I believe Hillary Clinton’s solution would be much like her predecessor’s — FDR, LBJ, and Obama — and just throw money at the problem in the hopes that it all goes away. We are already in a massive debt hole and her campaign promises to keep spending money we don’t have . What makes us think she would act any different if a crisis hit?

How would Trump react in a recession? A common praise given of Trump is that he is a business man and would therefore know how to fix America’s broken economy. And while it is true that he has made serious money as a business man, he has also done so by greasing the wheels with the help of government intervention. As a businessman who should know better about how money works, in particular loans, debt and repayment, Trump often baffles me with his proposals. Or maybe he is just showing his true nationalistic stripes in support of more crony capitalism. He has already proposed more than doubling Hillary’s infrastructure stimulus of $275 billion, and that’s in the current economy. I believe that Trump’s policies of tarrifs and of flooding the market with foreign-held dollars have a greater potential (at least based on our current government-dependent economy) to cause another recession than the deficit spending Hillary is proposing. If we enter a recession, it would inspire Trump to either impose more tariffs to hurt the consumer or use the backup plan of bankruptcy before he tried anything else. He might resort to his liberal tendencies and throw money at the problem as well.

In conclusion, I don’t believe either candidate will have the wherewithal to steer us through any economic disaster we might face.

History

There is substantial evidence that history runs in cycles. Whether it is the 80–100 year cycles proposed by the authors of the Fourth Turning or the 80 year swing of the Pendulum, there is reason to believe that there are tough times ahead.

The Fourth Turning was published in December 1997 towards the end of what the authors called the third turning (at least the most recent one as the trend has been going on for centuries). A turning is a kind of generational shift and lasts 20–25 years. The first turning is a high because society has just emerged through a collective crisis and is confident about where it wants to go as a whole. Our most recent first turning was 1946–1963 (post WWII until the assassination of President Kennedy). The second turning is an awakening. This is a time where institutions are attacked in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy. Our most recent second turning was Consciousness Revolution “which spanned the campus and inner-city revolts of the mid 1960s to the tax revolts of the early 80s.” The third turning is an unraveling. In this period, institutions, already weakened by the generational attacks of the second turning, become even weaker, while individualism takes on more and more strength from the revolutions until it is “strong and flourishing.” Our most recent third turning started with the “Morning in America” in the early 1980s under President Reagan and ended sometime in the mid 2000s either when the tech bubble burst in 1999, or with the attack on September 11th, or with the subsequent wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, or with the Great Recession of 2008. The fourth turning is a crisis. The last complete fourth turning spanned the tumultuous time of the stock crash of 1929 until the end of WWII. The fourth turning of the previous cycles have included such catastrophic events as the American Revolution and the Civil War. The good news is that fourth turnings, in spite of their trials and tribulations, or maybe because of them, have happy endings. In them, “America’s institutional life is torn down and rebuilt from the ground up…Fourth turnings have become new ‘founding moments’ in American history.” And it is always the youth, in WWII the Hero generation (born 1901–1924), in modern times the Millennials (born 1982 -2004) who bear the brunt of the solutions our country needs.

Pendulum was written 20 years after The Fourth Turning by authors Roy Williams and Michael Drew. T. Though similar to the historic cycles theorized by The Fourth Turning’s Howe and Strauss, Pendulum posits instead that generations swing between two extremes — the “We” and the “Me” —and not four turnings; back and forth and not round and round. Because the authors of Pendulum are market analysts and advertisers at heart, the book is intended to help business owners market their products. However, the book also helps determine the culture and climate for most anything

Using the diagram below, the “A” represents the “We” zenith and the “C” represents the “Me” zenith. The B is the equilibrium between downswing and upswings. It takes 20 years to go between letters. Williams and Drew caution that neither the “Me” or the “We” upswings should be considered as bad; there can be both good things and bad things about each zenith. It depends on who is in power and leading the “We” and what the “Me” is being pushed to do.

The simplest way to describe the shift in generations is how we associate with one another. If the bob of the pendulum is at A (we) it can be read as “I’m okay, but you’re not okay.” The last time we were at this zenith was 1943: Hitler and the Holocaust, FDR and the Japanese internment camps, and Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Of course this attitude was also necessary for the American public and the armed forces to come together and defeat the Nazis.

As we move down to the B, we shift to equilibrium: “I’m okay and you’re okay.” This is 1963 and the Do-your-own-thing counter culture. Some choices ended up more positively than others, but freedom was the theme of the day.

We upswing to C and the me generation of 1983: “I’m not okay, but you’re okay.” The positives are that the economy is improving from the gas lines and the high taxes, but there is also a shift in attitude. We no longer find satisfaction in being ourselves, but feel jealous of our neighbors — envying what others have and what they’re doing.

And then as the pendulum swings again towards B, we realize that for all the stuff we have acquired, it is all meaningless and hollow. As for B this time the equilibrium is different: “I’m not okay, and you’re not okay.” The upside is that we are no longer so infatuated with ourselves; instead, we are beginning to latch on to groups to be part of and to develop our sense of identity (see Fight Club, 1999) or even accomplish great things together (see Pirates of the Caribbean 2003, and Napoleon Dynamite 2004). The movies demonstrate that we have begun to crave camaraderie with people who are like us. But there is a negative side as well if the tendency arises to exclude people who don’t think and feel as we do. Some of it has been justified in the name of national security (NSA spying, TSA, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and some of it happened because we forgot people are people and not just measurable data and opinions (gay marriage debate).

As we continue on the upswing towards the “A” zenith, the groups we form a part of are less and less inclusive in their convictions and more and more partisan in their rhetoric (i.e. Republicans versus Democrats; Black Lives Matter versus Blue Lives Matter; Alt-Right versus Occupy; etc.). The gap widens as we ratchet up our discourse and it seems only a matter of time before “you’re not okay” becomes “you’re my enemy.” And only a short time after that when words become actions. How long did it take for the insult “das Juden” to become the wearing of yellow stars, and then the gas chambers? Or for the anti-Japanese sentiment to become anti-Japanese propaganda, and then the internment camps?

In terms of chronology, we have definitely started the fourth turning. There is a massive distrust of government and institutions and a desire to tear things down and start over. Donald Trump has tapped into some of the anti-Washington sentiment; it might be much of the fuel that has catapulted him to the Republican nomination. But there is a darker side to this anti-establishment revolution: Trump’s chief executive, Steve Bannon has said he wants to “bring everything crashing down.” like Lenin did in the Bolshevik revolution. The emergence of the Alt-Right could also be fueling this dangerous desire for something bordering on anarchy. To be fair, there are others on the left who also believe the system is broken and needs a restart. But groups like BLM and Occupy do not seem to be as enmeshed with candidates Hillary Clinton and her former primary foe, Bernie Sanders as their counterparts on the right. Of course that could all change after the election.

In terms of our discourse, we are definitely on the upswing towards a “We” zenith. During his time in office, Barack Obama often demonized the “fat cats” of Wall Street and referred to the Tea Party as “tea baggers.” He also disparaged people who “cling to guns or religion” and said “the police acted stupidly” even when he freely admitted to not having all the facts. Hillary Clinton has lumped half of Trump supporters into a “basket of deplorables,” and labeled the Republicans the enemies she is most proud of, but she has also consistently given pejorative labels to her husband’s accusers. For his part, Donald Trump has called illegal immigrants “killers, rapists, criminals,and animals; he called Rosie O’Donnell “a fat pig,” Megyn Kelly “a bimbo,” and Hillary Clinton “the devil.” Whether the Alt-Right is associated with or just supports Trump, they too, are exceptionally gifted in the of trolling and reporting to grade school insults.

It is not important in the above examples to distinguish whose rhetoric is worse, or more provocative, or which has more potential to damage our human sensibilities. Making the case that Trump’s insults are worse than Clinton’s misses the point that the caustic rhetoric will burn us all regardless of who spews it first or most. We must recognize that unrestrained rhetoric by any leader that stereotypes and demonizes others only desensitizes us to the point where words become actions, actions that can have catastrophic effects on the future of our country. As Williams and Drew point out:

“Marketing becomes very easy as we approach the zenith of the “We.” Just choose what and who you will demonize and then start tossing fear-soaked words as though they were longneck beer bottles full of gasoline with fiery rags stuffed down their throats. It’s Machiavellian, we know, but its true nonetheless. We wish we could bring you happier new, but the simple truth is this: unless we begin working together to soften this coming trend, of ‘I’m OK , you;re not OK,’ we’re about to enter the ugliest twenty years of the Pendulum’s eighty-year round trip.”

Those words were written in 2012. If history runs in cycles, the final upswing of the pendulum started in 2013 and will reach its zenith in 2023. The last time the pendulum was at this exact point (2016) was in 1936. Even though World War II wouldn’t officially start for another three years when Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, international battle lines were already being drawn around the Spanish Civil War. Hitler’s instructions to his lieutenants were not to necessarily aid the Spanish nationalists, but to find ways to prolong the conflict to “occupy the attention of the United Kingdom and France, and to continue to widen the chasm between the United Kingdom and Italy.” Can parallels be drawn today in the Syrian/Middle Eastern conflict and how the United States, Russia and other NATO countries are responding to the conflict? Some have speculated how WWIII might begin, others say we are closer than one might think. We are certainly approaching global conflict all over again. The question is who will be leading us?

Historical cycles are what scare me the most about a Donald Trump presidency: he holds grudges; he stews over slights, insults and other disparaging remarks then tweets his rebuttals at 3 o’clock in the morning; he insults and then punishes his enemies rather than finding a way to forgive, reconcile, and move on; his surrogates and many of his followers seem prepared to do the same; he can supposedly broker a killer trade deal (win-lose), but I don’t think he has it in him to broker a solution that is win-win; domestically, he could break the racial ties that have already been fractured in this country and we could be on the verge of a race war; globally, he seems more adept to a “shoot-from-the-hip unilateralism” than a cogent foreign policy.

Hillary is not as divisive as Trump, but she has is no stranger to exacerbating an us versus them mentality, enough to make a “We” zenith at least somewhat troublesome. What concerns me more about Hillary, historically speaking, is how ineptly she will react to the shifting times and perhaps dangerous culture. There is either a disconnect or a naivete on how she sees the dangers of the world (i.e. the Russian reset button, the strife in Libya — “we came, we saw, he died”— the attack in Benghazi “what does it matter,” and her email being hacked). She seems more passive-aggressive than assertive, more devious and round about than straight forward, and seems to lack the ability to anticipate threats or react to trouble authentically and in real time. The time for reactionary or focus-group policies are long gone, if there ever really was a time for them. We need a real leader with vision and tenacity who can lead the country through troubled times.

November 9th

This election is a perfect storm. Not only are the leading candidates the least favorable ever produced by major parties, but such ratings come at a time of increased political polarization and uncertainty about the future; moreover, the threats facing our nation couldn’t be greater, and we lack the leadership necessary to address them. Those looking to a third-party candidate for a way out of this conundrum must face the reality that this election is binary, at least in terms of the results. While it it true that any other Democratic candidate could have easily beaten Trump, and any other Republican candidate could have easily beaten Clinton, there is still too much fear and anxiety holding sway in the minds of voters to allow a third-party candidate to have a fighting chance. Whatever long-shot strategy Gary Johnson (winning New Mexico) or Evan McMullin (winning Utah) have to overthrow the two party system, they do not have the momentum to both hold Trump and Clinton under 270 and eek out a presidential election with a vote in Congress. This does not mean that you shouldn’t vote your conscience and support whichever candidate you find worthy of your sacred vote. I absolutely encourage you to vote for whomever you deem worthy of your support. It is your vote to do with as you see fit. Period. End of story. But in so doing, you should not expect an election miracle. On the morning of November 9th, either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton will be president-elect.

But all is not lost. This perfect storm gives us the perfect opportunity. At least 40 million people (thought that may be a stretch if this is a low turnout election)are going to wake up angry on November 9th because their candidate lost. They will bemoan the fact that _________ is in office and claim that “we are doomed.” And though there will be real evidence to support such a claim, there is also real evidence to bolster the fact that our best days are ahead of us, no matter what the white house does. Losing this election may be a defining moment in the lives of those who feel their votes were for naught, but losing the election does not define them. Rather our response to their loss “will help define us.”

So after the usual empty threats of moving to Canada have died down, and after we have bandaged our bloodied hands and patched the holes in our drywall, and after we have forsaken our colorful language for more decorous communication and emptied our tissue boxes and moved to the 5th stage of grief (acceptance), then the real work can commence.

When the plane goes down, it is not going to matter who was flying, what we had for lunch, or what we should have known before hand and when we should have known it. At that point it is pretty useless to blame someone — the pilots, the mechanics, or even the food — for plunging 30,000 feet out of the sky. What we can do at that point, if we haven’t done so already is reach for our oxygen masks, help others to do the same and brace ourselves and our loved ones for impact. It will help more if at that point in time our “loved ones” include not only those who have always held a special place in our hearts, but also those newfound friends who had once been enemies and strangers.

At the Treaty of Versailles, at the conclusion of World War I, Woodrow Wilson and the other Allied leaders were determined to punish Germany for the role they played in starting the Great War. The punishment included disarmament, war reparations, and territorial concessions. This punishment has been determined by many to be one of the catalysts for the rise of German nationalism, the subsequent invasion of Poland and World War II.

In contrast, Lincoln’s second inaugural address, which he gave even before the Civil War had officially ended, offered the olive branch to the South. He did not want to punish the South for the crimes they had committed. Instead he wanted to reconcile. He said:

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

The last few elections have been fairly partisan, but this one has been especially egregious. Whatever happens at the ballot box on November 8th, the future of our country depends more on how we react on November 9th than who wins the election. Yes your vote matters, but what matters a million times more is what you do in the weeks and months after the election. One thing we cannot do is continue to harbor rancor and contempt towards those with whom we previously disagreed. We cannot be dragged down to their level of us versus them. We must foster reconciliation. And we must begin to coalesce around a “We,” maybe even a “We the people,” one that will stand against hate and discrimination on the issues of both sides of the aisle.

When the plane goes down, when we are scrambling for our life jackets, and reaching out for our loved ones, when we are trying to comfort and save our fellow passengers, we must remember that faith is stronger than fear. There will certainly be moments of doubt and frustration, even despair. That is normal. But we will have ourselves, our family and friends, our faith, our wherewithal, and the things we have prepared ahead of time for this moment to see us through. The crisis will not last forever. We will find our way to our fellow passengers and maybe even a raft of sorts, and together we will navigate safely to shore.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — fin — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

As always, look for opportunities to have conversations either by responding to this post or by talking with people you know and trust in your own life. Remember that We the People, not Washington D.C. are the solutions to the problems we will face in the coming years. #projectnovember9