This will be my last published column before the presidential election. I won’t write about the results next month, however. Despite feeling concern over our future regardless of who wins, I’ll move on and make the best of it in my community.
I hope those fervent followers of the losing candidate also can move on without too much despair or hate. This negative current cycle has to change. When all of the ballots have been tallied after Nov.
5 (perhaps “long” after in some places), will there be something similar to the 2020 mass march on the Capitol that included chants of “hang Mike Pence”? Or, could we see a replay of the massive 2016 anti- Trump demonstrations across the country that included chants of “not my president?” Something worse, either way? The losers next month will find a way to protest in a big way. It’s going to happen because both sides have insisted that democracy will end as we know it if the other side wins. I’m more afraid that people will again claim that the election was stolen or fraudulent or interfered by Russia or China or the boogeyman .
.. how this state made it too tough to vote or that state allowed too many late mail-in ballots .
.. and that in actuality, democracy will continue to be stymied, not by a new president, but by the pettiness and rhetoric in Congress.
We can continue to be consumed by this fruitless finger-pointing after the election or we can try to do something purposeful in our spheres. How did we get here? Don.