Thank you my friends and followers, new readers and old alike, for your patience in awaiting my glacial process in writing my thoughts so that you may dissect them. Once, I would have apologized, begged forgiveness, said I am sorry. I am transitioning this side of me, and instead thanking people for their concessions to the fault or foible that created friction. I am not indicating that there are not times in which I must apologize, but trying to make such apologies less hollow by continually saying “I’m sorry,” when I do not have a reason to do so.
Anyhow, that has little to do with the purpose behind my decision to collect my thoughts and attempt to translate them into something that is a least slightly intelligible and coherent.
As many of you are aware, I very, very rarely endorse any particular candidate or issue. I, rather encourage you to become informed and decide. Had I written this even 48 hours ago, I may have had to step into that area. With the election done, and just waiting for the plus-sized female’s aria to end, there is no need to boast or to moan. The experiment that is the United States continues, and we are still her citizens, whether our candidate to assume the executive leadership of the nation was the winner of the election or the also-ran.
Having hinted at the heart of this thought exercise, I am writing to express the supremely important need to now come together as one country. Wait; I know that sounds naive and unattainable, but let me lay out what I need to put down, and see if you can pick it up.
I have watched our nation’s elected representatives and her leadership as they pushed partisan, even occasionally personal, agendas instead of moving their ideas to be as acceptable and appropriate to, if not all, as many members of the United States as is possible.
Let me point something out before I get much deeper into this. Anyone who swears an oath for some position of authority and responsibility over any part of the populace of this country (federal, state, municipal) does so with the knowledge and therefore acceptance of a duty to uphold the Constitution of the United States first and foremost, before any other similar organizing doctrine.
Not to a particular leader; not to a partisan platform; not to their own personal aspirations, but to the ideals and foundational principles that our Constitution and the subsequent amendments enshrine.
If we can keep this in mind, regardless of any social, economic, political, religious or any other differences (differences that make us all human), we should come together, clean up our public spaces, and return to making our nation move ever closer to the ideals of we want to use a beacons to the world, and our world into a place which we will be proud to hand to the next several generations.
I know that there are some who are so entrenched into some ideas that are not only extreme, but antithetical to the freedom that we all cherish for ourselves. Liberty means nothing if it isn’t applied to everyone; and those few who have had their liberties restricted in someway have had them them done so through the due process of law. Liberty, freedom, whatever one wishes to say is not a license to do anything you choose without consequence. Exercise of one’s rights is not without limit - limits that prevent any person or group to reduce, revoke or restrain the exercise of any other to do the same; at least not without due process of law - laws that continue to be in support of that same concept. Laws that prohibit some individual or group, make them less equal under the law than others - that is not due process; that is beginning of tyranny, of suppression of the many to benefit the few. And when that intentionally causes harm to that person or group at the gain of some individual or other group is evil at work.
I hope that the promises made that will benefit the vast majority (90% or more) will be accomplished.
I hope that the divisive and denigrating rhetoric will dissipate, and that the extremist who have exposed themselves to the daylight will not be allowed to skulk back into the shadows and darkness, but be made to withstand the glare and answer for their push to make others less so that they can pretend to be more.
I hope that we, as a nation, we, as citizens of these United States can come together despite our differences, whatever they may be, we can come together, find the commonality, the middle-ground, and work to truly return the nation into one that is to be aspired to by any other person, group, or nation to emulate the liberties that we seem to have taken for granted and allowed us become so divided.
I feel as if I am beginning to lose the train of thought. So I close for now, with the usual requests for comment or question.