Politically Restless . . .

I'd like to entertain you with a light entry, brimming with bright and beautiful pictures of my past week.  Pictures full of friendship and color and animals.  But there's something buzzing around in my brain that simply won't let me be.

Instead of feeling the urge to party like it's 1999 . . . 

. . . my tear ducts want to water.

So, I'm hoping to unload my carry-on bag right here.  Give us all a little food for thought.  

And maybe THEN we can ALL breathe a little bit easier.  (I find that with this delightful head cold which my husband found necessary to share with me, Mucinex-D also assists in better breathing.  Let's consider this a bit of written decongestant.)  And, YES, I'm fully aware of the mixed metaphors in this paragraph.  I can do it if I wanna.  This isn't a term paper, you know!

We live in a world of opposites.  Of differences.  And at no time in our society does this fact appear more glaringly apparent than during a presidential election year.

A person without a hard and fast party affiliation -- like myself -- starts looking around and sees how very alone they are on the vast opinionated political plains.  But, instead of longing for a nice little pre-cut niche in which to fit, round peg to round hole, square peg to square hole, I breathe a sigh of relief, and at times dismay, disgust or disgruntlement.  And, I'm supposing I'm not as alone as it might at first appear.  Voters like me just don't perform cannon balls from the high dive into the deep end of the pool, eager to make the biggest, loudest, most obnoxious splash, so we're harder to locate.  Personally, what with the glut of costly negative ads on television, paid pundits jabbing and sparring with weighted verbal gloves, and now the social forums like Facebook and Twitter alight with unkind, abrasive, and often untrue, pictures and posts, presidential election season fills me with dread.  It doesn't bring out the best in most people.  And the constitution takes a beating, with folks declaring their 'right to free speech' every time something crass and downright ignorant is said or written.

It's at those times that I take a good hard look at the person next to me, so very individual, so fortunate to be an American, so patriotic if somewhat misguided in the way they are choosing to express their political leanings, and thus represent our democratic system to the rest of the watching world, and want to ask, "Do you have MY back as a fellow citizen?  Because I have YOURS."  However I vote, regardless of the thought process by which I arrive at that decision, I'm not only considering myself and the well-being of my family and circle of friends, but the well-being of the people of my nation.  The decision weighs on my conscience all the way to the booth.  I'd like to believe that a majority of voters out there in election land feel a portion of that awesome burden as well, whether Democrat or Republican, independent or other.  But when they're so intently bent on bashing the candidates (and as an aside, as a stumbling but loyal Christian, I see how it hurts the way non-Christians view our faith when WE partake of the bashing, and often more loudly and righteous than others), it muddies the waters to such an extent that any clear true motives are obscured. 

 I wonder if it is more important for people and parties to be number one, to be right, to be morally, religiously or socially superior, so much so that they've neglected to contemplate how our founding fathers approached their right to create and live in a republic, unencumbered by a monarchy, fettered solely by the discretionary views of the educated and fair-thinking populous, regardless of their affiliation.  I think we disrespect the process when we insult the office of the president, and that means whoever is holding that office, with base innuendo and cruel or flippant mockery.  There's a line between disliking the incumbents on principle and desiring alternate policies, and crowing like a bandy rooster that they're satanic or manipulating a sound-byte to make it appear they've espoused something that they clearly have not.  Whatever happened to possessing divergent perspectives and debating those perspectives as ladies and gentlemen?  Whatever happened to taking our portion of individual responsibility for how our nation is turning out, from insurance to infrastructure to economics, and NOT simply placing 100% of it on the shoulders of WHOEVER ends up precariously perched on the highest seat?  To looking at how each of us spends and lives and works, how we each represent our America on a daily basis?  Including how we post on social forums and how we discuss men and women running for office, whom we've never even met, in front of our children.  And I include myself in that equation.  Over the years, I've tried to temper my immediate visceral response to what I see and hear in all instances, including politics, by considering how I'd feel if I was connected to the person or situation.  Because, really, by three or three thousand degrees of separation . . . I am connected.          

There.  All better now.  I've said my piece. 

 Probably the most you'll ever 'hear' me say about politics.  There's enough fodder in the form of polls and shows and literature to choke the entire population of Tennessee Walking horses in our fair state.  I'm definitely not tossing my hat into THAT ring.  I'd rather wear my hat and shade myself from the heat of the next two weeks.  

And then I'll hang it up and join everyone in a collective SIGH-H-H!