Election Thoughts
I read with great interest and appreciation Mr. Luther Munford's submission of October 20 titled "A Prophetic Movie from 1957." This movie ("A Face in the Crowd") was shown on the TCM channel several years ago, and I remember drawing the same disturbing parallels as Mr. Munford did to Donald Trump. My concerns have only heightened over time, or I should say I've morphed into panic mode!
I agree with Liz Cheney that we must do everything in our power to see that Trump is not allowed anywhere near the Oval Office ever again. I pray with all my heart that he is prosecuted for his crimes against this nation, the two most important being (IMO) his inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, with directions to the Secret Service to "remove the magnetometers" because, he said, (his people) were not going to hurt HIM; and his illegally absconding with thousands of documents that belonged not to him but to the United States of America. Hopefully, time will tell just how much our national security, and perhaps that of other nations, was endangered by this action on his part.
In the same vein, I believe that no matter how distasteful we might find Joe Biden to be (certainly his wild spending MUST be controlled), we as a nation must not pro-actively elect or re-elect a bunch of GOP QAnon types or election deniers to Congress next week. Surely some of the most culpable of these have to be those members of Congress who voted not to certify the election EVEN AFTER THE INSURRECTION. It's very sad that many Democrats voted for such Trump-endorsed candidates in the primaries in order to make the Democrats more electable (in their opinion) in the general election. This was a HUGE gamble--one that can backfire, and for example, put (an even more radical) GOP back in control of the House, where we could see the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or even Trump himself elected as Speaker of the House under the current House rules. McCarthy has already brazenly stated that one of the first things he wants to do is cut aid to Ukraine, though he hypocritically tried to walk that back.
It's amazing how quickly many Republicans can abandon their signature issue--opposition to abortion--when their coveted power is at risk. Dana Loesch of NRA fame made the following "cute" statement recently: "I don't care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate."
As a life-long Republican, before the advent of Donald Trump, I believed that it was downright unpatriotic not to exercise one's right to vote. However, I no longer feel that way. Our politics are in such bad shape that I don't know anything to do but abstain (in most cases) and leave the consequences to God. I cannot vote for election deniers, an*****annot vote for Democrats when Biden is stating that the first thing he wants to do with the new Congress is codify a perceived right to abortion. In my tortured state of mind in 2016 (which also carried me through me through the 2020 election), I ran across this quote by Charles Spurgeon: "Of two evils, choose neither." I have no regrets; and as I write this, I am looking out my window at the Ukrainian flag flying in the wind alongside my American flag. Viva Ukraine!
