Election Day 2020 - First Step Toward Healing?

Two days from now is Election Day, which heretofore had been a demonstration of the majesty of American democracy. Her Majesty has been dethroned. Millions are wailing for a change in presidential leadership and millions of others demand that the current administration be granted another term.

We are an angry people who seem willing to fight over everything and anything. No issue is too trivial to demand someone’s cancellation. Has the current administration caused these seemingly irreparable angry divisions or simply revealed them? What is the pathway back to civil life?

Those who support Vice President Joe Biden do so in part because they believe that his decency and empathy can serve as a national healing elixir. I pray that this is the case, but I have deep doubts in his capacity to turn a lumbering ocean liner around with only a set of oars. The healing, if it is ever to occur, will have to come from within. And we have to want to be healed. If an angry person wishes or needs to remain so, then no change will be possible.

Oarsman-in-Chief

Consider these realities that will confront the next president.

An angry nation with deepening divisions.
Seething partisanship in the government and in society at large.
A pandemic that is oozing over the nation like hot molten lava.
Economic collapse with more pain to come as the virus roars back.
A stock market that may be poised to tank.
Racial injustice and unrest.
Cancel culture.
Erosion in the integrity of many of our nation’s foundational institutions.
Loss of trust in everything.
Cybercrime, an untraceable scourge which causes damage, chaos and rising fear.
Fractured foreign alliances.
Aggressive actors on the international stage.
Natural disasters.

If we elect a change in leadership, all of these quagmires and those yet to come will be his. In time, he will own them. The intractable challenges will surround him and us. One set of oars won't move the ship. Many of us will have to row along side him Which direction will you be rowing?

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