I'm sick already of people saying "We did it!" Whenever I hear it, I immediately wonder "What exactly did you do?" Did you campaign? Did you knock on doors for your guy? Did you make phone calls? Did you tell everyone and their mother who you were voting for? Did you volunteer to work the polls on Election Day? Did you stand on the street corners holding up a sign?
Or did you just vote?
Personally, I'm saving my praise for another day—a day when we really did do it.
Maybe we did do it. Maybe we went to the polls and maybe we checked a little box that symbolically said how we felt about things, but the praise should be reserved until we do something far greater then show up for an election once every four years.
I voted for Obama, but I'm still part of the people he has to convince. I voted for him more out distaste for the other guy, than because I really believed he would change things. He put hope in people's hearts, but hope does not automatically translate to a plan that will mean anything at all.
The thing this election has made me realize more than any election before it is we are too far divided to make the difference that Obama and his supporters hope for.
A long time ago, I decided to give to Caesar what is Caesar, and not be guilted into voting for a President who supposedly would make this country more moral (whatever the word moral means); if eight years has taught me anything, it's that saying you believe in Jesus Christ doesn't make you a better President—it seems it does quite the opposite. The only Presidents in my lifetime that really stressed the “Jesus” factor (Bush and Carter) have been the two least favored Presidents of the past thirty years.
Personally, I hope Bush pulls a Carter; I hope he realizes that he did so much damage to this country that he should spend the rest of his life doing non-profit work to rebuild everything he ruined over the last eight years; maybe then he’ll realize what it truly means to say you are a follower of Jesus Christ. But what he did isn’t the countries biggest problem; its biggest problem is a large percent of America believes that he could do a better job leading this country then Obama—and nothing Obama says or does will change this because their minds are already set.
There are a lot of homosexuals in California that woke up following the election and realized that they no longer could marry, and there are a lot conservatives who are all the more happy to rub it in their face and remind them of it. Equally there are a lot of conservatives that woke up following the elections and realized that the man of their dreams was not going to be President, and there are a lot of liberals excited to tell them so.
Politics has made this nation one which groups of people must have superiority--where the elections are held to a certain level of spectacle, and people are led to believe that their are winners and there are losers--that we are not united on one team called America, but divided by party colors. The fact is today there are thousands of people not thinking about what this election means for this country, rather they are thinking about how they can be the winners in 2012.
There are too many people out there who, instead of pausing and saying "how can we work together to fix this country," are saying this is how we can get this guy out of office or this is how we can get the proposition on the ballot again.
There are too many people on both sides of the fence who never stopped for a second to look at the other side. It's time for the left and the right to call a truce, and give each other a fair chance to make the difference that we each believe in.
There are people already lining up to file lawsuits because they believe their rights have been violated; maybe their rights have been violated, but perhaps it's time to say there is something far greater then 'my' rights. I do not believe a thing such as 'my' rights can ever really be solved, but 'our' rights collectively still have a fighting chance if people stop looking at the country in terms of what 'I' want, and start looking at it in terms of what 'we' want. Unity is what has always made this country strong; and unity is the only thing that can ever fix this country.
Unity is what everyone is preaching; it’s what they said the country needed four years ago, and four years before that. It’s what they always say we need. And they are right—we do need it. But until both sides can sit at the same table and not fight about who is more right, then it’s never going to happen.
Yes we can...but will we ever do it?
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