United We Vote and Slump: Clinton or Trump
November 1, 2016
We are a week away from the closing of this 2016 Presidential election cycle in America. If there is one thing that we can all agree on despite of our political party inclinations, age, perception of race, gender and sexual orientation—it’s that we are exhausted.
The Race
There are other contenders for the presidency but that’s not really a serious thought. Our choices are simple and ardently depressing as they can’t seem to cancel each other out effectively to help us avoid the inevitable. Either former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton or Mr. Donald J. Trump must win this election.
My Myopic View
Personally I lead a very busy life that includes perhaps 5 hours to myself per week to ingest information through the reading of newspapers, magazines or just listening to other folks who get to make a living off of speaking their mind with make-up, sharp clothing and bright cable news cameras rolling.
What I see are two major party candidates that have started to sound very much alike and both have such a speckled past that if we wrote a sitcom on them there would be more seasons of material than Cheers, Friends and Seinfeld combined.
It’s belittling at this point to read columnists or listens to news pundits that claim that we the American people are at such odds with ourselves that we’re “hating” on our neighbors and strangers like. Of course I acknowledge that there will always be a subset of people who are unfortunately close-minded and try to strike out at others who won’t think the way they do.
Despite the incessant news cycle, the drunken-like tweet feeds and the stats-on-crack polls I believe that our nation is much more united in philosophy than we’ve been allowed to recognize.
Embedded Florida Early-Voting
As an unapologetic native Floridian I’ve enjoyed deep belly laughs listening to reporters over the years try to figure our state out especially during election season. We started voting last Monday and when I found out from a Facebook colleague I headed over to our local library that very afternoon.
Parents or guardians of young children can feel like an embedded journalist does when present in an active military theatre. I wanted to cut and run countless times, especially when my own 1-year-old started to fling her body onto the cement sidewalk and proceeded to roll for the curb. Visions of the hooded electoral college flooded my mind with doubts as to whether my vote mattered at all in the end.
Making it into the voting room itself finally felt like the sweet victory of your high school homecoming game until one of the volunteers looked at my driver’s liscense and then back at me as if I was an underaged kid trying to buy wine coolers—it struck me later that I judged the poor lady too harshly, I actually looked pretty war-torn and not a bit like the polished, pre-mother of three chick on that ID photo she was trying to compare with the stressed out bag and baby carrier mama in front of her.
The hour spent waiting for the chance to connect an incomplete arrow pointing to my respective voting choices gave me some time to work the public relations front with my fellow dutiful citizens around me. As I made the rounds of apologies, utterances of thanks and friendly exchanges with some of the sympathetic parents/grandparents around us I was able to get an idea of why there were so many people there on the very first day of early voting.
“I just want to be done with it.” “I don’t want to deal with this on THE day.” “ I want to get it out-of-the-way.” “I’m over this election already, just putting in my two cents and finish.” “It’s just the right thing to do.” And my personal favorite, “Stay in line that way you don’t have to try to do this another day.” (directed at me by the sweet soul waiting behind me and letting me know with another lady that my child lost her pacifier in a thicket of bushes next to us)
Character? Please. Next Issue.
Another united moment for us has to be this “character” analysis of Clinton and Trump respectively. Since this is my blog short I reserve the right to pose the idea that perhaps both of them have flaws and less than savory precedents for what Americans seem to have the appetite for in a president. We unanimously seem to dislike these choices before us and yet we’re still voting like it’s the rent or mortgage payment that we must abide by.
Future: Our Children and Grandchildren Have Gotten a Whiff
We’re united in understanding that our social structure as a whole has changed in the light of the rapid/non-stop information digital age. The younger generations among us are united in not understanding how we operated in prior decades without Snapchat, emojis, Facebook public journaling, computers in the guise of a telephone and the list goes on about technologies and softwares that I admittedly have no idea about.
We must move forward no matter what the result of this presidential cycle. Is it possible for us to learn from our prior mistakes in the past couple decades of trashing the incoming POTUS and his/her administration? Can we try to look at our own lives in our own cities and towns and see how much or little we can be involved in the political process even if it’s just volunteering on a subcommittee for your local town council? When will the “They” become “Us” in regard to our governing process in our nation whether it’s at the local, state or national level? Can the wrongs that will inevitably occur become ours to collectively own up to and then pick up together and move forward with better ideas learned?
Vote, Pray and Love.
I encourage everyone that is alive and of legal age to go ahead and vote. Pray for our country, think good thoughts for our nation if you don’t know/believe that something or Someone put our little planet in motion in an ocean of organized chaos. In the end, please have a little love for whomever or whatever political party “wins”. We are all Americans and we will survive what 2016 has brought us and this presidential election cycle will be a historic one full of many lessons for years to come.
R.V.S.B.
Trump Trumps: President-Elect Donald J. Trump on November 9, 2016.
Congratulations!
It’s real. We the People of the United States of America now realize that we really don’t know what we stand for: Democrat, Republican or otherwise.
I recall the 2016 Republican primary for POTUS earlier this year in March. The incredible number of men and one woman running for the big-ticket. I remember a populist voice. It was “the Donald.” It was the “You’re fired” guy. This was the man who none of the political elites dared to give credit or respect to listen to, let alone conceive that he could actually be the nominee of the “Grand Ole Party.”
Then there was the Democratic primary…Hillary Clinton POTUS ticket redux (sorry ma’am, your best chance was 2008) and a few token piece gentlemen, although Bernie Sanders does get points for rousing at least the low-attention span of the millennial base. They had crowned their queen before the Democratic Convention…but we’re not a monarchy.
So here we are…the Republican party is burning yet standing (given the congressional polling numbers coming in House and Senate), the Democratic party is nursing the wounds of the “pendulum swing” that can occur after any two term President of the United States.
I may be a mother-wife-homemaker without a W-2 form or newspaper column tenure, homeschooler, part-time caretaker of 90-year-old grandparents but I can see and call what is happening. Our country is at a reckoning point and it’s a blessed thing–no doubt painful to be clear.
I love Democrats and Republicans alike (even in if I align myself as a conservative Republican woman)…we as a nation need to take a time-out and recognize that we are stronger together. Please, if you’re aligned with Secretary Hillary Clinton, don’t despair! The United States of America will go on without an overly liberal agenda or a Bush era-heavy influence. Populism is the name of the game. Go USA!
I believe President-elect Donald J. Trump will do his best along with his transition team to put America first. That includes the work of sitting President Obama and former Secretary Hillary Clinton and all the former Presidents of the U.S. still living with us.
God bless America. I pray for us already and will continue to do so. We need to stick together no matter who is POTUS. I respected President Obama even if I don’t agree with all his policies and ideas for the last eight years. I encourage those opposed to “the Donald” to do the same.
We are America. Unless you want to go to another country, please let’s just stick together and find what our common ground is–I never thought that the 2 party system was the answer in the end. It’s 2016, perhaps it’s time to reconsider.
God and Universe Bless,
R.V.S.Bean