I’ve not been able to simply put election 2016 aside. I’ve been feeling alternately agitated,
tearful or numb. My sleep is
erratic. Surely this is not the first
time the candidate I favored lost the election—but this time it is
different. It feels as if some deep dark
covered-over menace has been unleashed . . . as if we’ve lived behind
pleasant-faced masks that have suddenly been ripped off to expose ugliness. I know from others that the unrest I speak of
is widespread. Whatever this is, it didn’t begin with the
primaries—but the vicious campaign brought it fully to light. As I look back I ask, “How did it show itself
before the campaign?” “What is the
bigger underlying flaw?”
The most recent indicator was congress’ refusal to bring a
vote forward for the Supreme Court nominee in spite of the Constitutional
requirement to do so. It was the
culmination of the Republican’s having made it a policy to oppose anything
coming out of Obama’s White House. Prior
to the last election, the Republican Party had avowed that its main goal was to
make sure Obama didn’t win a second term—when they didn’t achieve that goal but
won a majority in Congress, they set out to block every initiative of his. It was total disrespect of him, the country’s
first black president, and so too for the office of president. A conscious decision to stop our government
from functioning for partisan and/or prejudicial reasons is evil.
The wisdom of two-party governance is to insure that
extremes are curtailed by the necessity of compromise. Stonewalling disabled the system, resulting
in extreme polarization that paralyzed government. Attitudes in high places have a way of
spreading. More and more people became
dissatisfied with their lot and looked for a scapegoat, slipping into an ‘us
vs. them’ mentality.
From the very beginning of the primaries, Donald Trump took
the position of all-out no-holds-barred attacks with personal insults,
innuendoes, bear-faced lies and bombastic proclamations. Clearly he believed ‘the ends justify the means’—utterly
defying decorum, truth, and human decency—because for him, winning is all that
matters! His theatrics won media
attention, and ultimately the nomination.
As candidate his cry became, “The system is broken!” Without analysis of the roots of the problem
he pointed a finger of blame at the opposition while making the outrageous
claim, “Only I can fix it!” Then
appealing to every prejudice and issue of unease throughout the country, he
fanned the fires of unrest, resulting in much vengeance voting, not a vote for something but against someone.
But why was the country ripe for such blatant
manipulation?
There are numerous outside forces that contribute to the
unrest and anxiety: near national financial disaster (from which Obama saved
us), the Middle East chaos causing a refugee crisis, global terrorism, climate
anomalies reeking death and destruction—yes, but those are the outside factors;
something within our culture has gone
awry . . . To even the most casual
observer above the age of 40, there seems to be agreement that in the last half
century, society has exhibited moral decline; erasing the lines between good
& bad, right & wrong, virtue & evil.
You cannot successfully run a country (or a family) without
having an identifiable standard of acceptable behavior. Throughout time, regardless of the name
assigned to the deity, it was understood that a god-principle set standards of
behavior and the standards were rooted in morality.
As America was being formed, religion was an important
element of social order. There were many
different beliefs and practices, but the concept of ‘a God’ was common to
all. Our nation was founded on moral
principles and the belief that God underscored the rights and freedoms we
possess . . . ‘endowed by the Creator
with certain Unalienable Rights’ . . . The Declaration of Independence, Thomas
Jefferson. References to God were
prominent as the elements of governing were worked out—even the money minted
carries the words “In God We Trust”. In
schools it was traditional to begin each day with a simple prayer.
In 1962 a law was passed to ban prayer from public schools. There followed the removal of any religious
symbols from government buildings (i.e. The Ten Commandments from courthouses),
and prayer was eliminated at official gatherings. The Constitution guaranteed the freedom of
religious worship but the new interpretation became freedom from rather
than freedom of. Amendment 1:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof.
To prohibit public prayer by law is to give a message of
denial of value, maybe even to suggest negative value. In its wake, for many, God faded, became irrelevent and was ignored. Religion has provided the foundation of moral
order and prayer is a means to remind us.
It was denied by the state without providing another identifiable
standard of acceptable behavior—and that is the flaw that opened the door to
moral decline—and Trump was waiting to walk through it.
