And it’s Over for Another Year

Seems as I get older, I grow tired of the political rhetoric faster each year. Everybody’s got their own idea how to make things better. Everybody thinks their opponent’s got the wrong idea. The amount of mud that gets slung gets deeper with each Election Day passing. I’m fairly certain that there was enough of it this year to create a large adobe style city.

The voters were unhappy, to be sure. Some voted for the other candidate not out of believing that they’re right, but out of needing to change the status quo. I’m not sure it’s the right approach, but it’s the only one we’ve got short of out and out civil war (and no, I don’t advocate a civil war). It’s hard to believe in those who represent and lead you when things are not right. But, things have not been right with our great nation of the U.S.A. for a very long time. Certainly longer than the current administration, possibly going back as far as the year of my high school graduation. That’s 1975 for those who don’t read profiles and/or don’t want to do the math. The repair of things will not happen overnight, will not happen in a year, or two years, or even in the term of a president. We’d like to think that a miracle worker will come along and fix it all in flick of a magic wand, but we know it’s not going to happen.

It’s sort of like being overweight, a subject *ahem* I am somewhat familiar with. The weight did not just instantly appear. The problems associated with it didn’t crop up out of nowhere in the blink of an eye. It takes years of overindulgence and lack of discipline in areas where it’s needed to get to the point we are today. The problems of our government, whether we’re talking local, state, or federal level, slowly developed as any weight problem and aren’t going to go away with the “pill” of ousting what is perceived as the source of all our ills, officials already in office who haven’t made us better on a fairly short timetable.

Those who will benefit as a result of this changeover in representation and control in January likely know that their political careers may end just as quickly as the ones they just ended if they’re unsuccessful in moving to right what’s wrong and take us back to better times. We as a voting body are not fickle and are not stupid. We know it’s not going to happen right away, but we expect positive results that we can live with and we don’t care which party brings about the improvements so long as it happens in the not too distant future.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Those are the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, for those who don’t recognize it. Don’t let me need to be reminded of this passage when I’m voting in the next big election.