From a post I received on Facebook: “…at 9 PM today we will still be citizens of the USA and our duties and obligations to the betterment of society don’t end with one election. We have to figure out as a society who we want to be, with all the people we do not agree with, because we don’t have a choice.
My response
You mistake the ideal from the real and, thought your faith in the system should be a good thing, the system is corrupted enough that faith in it is foolish, the better tact to attack those aspects of the system that prevent it from being reasonable, fair, just, equitable and humane, the latter necessitating a people’s will to think about and make decisions based upon what is good for the whole, to vote in support of that which serves the common good. Americans are really not capable of handling democracy and the evidence is in the cruelty the vote too often allows, the inequalities and injustices that are made to be legal under the law by the representatives the people choose. There is a flaw in the process. It could be a fatal flaw and it is possible that that flaw is inherent in the nature of human beings. It is also possible that the flaw is a result of the way people are brought up in a society. I want to think it is the latter for, if it is, there is a possibility for a democracy of decency. Education could, perhaps, teach to the value of reason and cause citizens to demand that only reasonable decisions become policy and law, reason that is tempered by empathy, concern for the welfare of all. Right now, there cannot be unity for unity means acceptance of the irrational, the indecent, and, yes, the immoral, of crimes against humanity allowed for under the system, its laws, and by too many citizens to believe that the current system and the ways the people allow for it and protect it can lead to the good society.
