72 Hours on This Day

It is a time where people worldwide are sitting on pins and needles waiting for the results of Election Day 2024 in the United States of America. Starting in 2023 and before the candidates began to get polished and scheduled for the journey to rallies, interviews, townhalls, and more. It is now the resulting day for American citizens to choose who they want to manage our country for the next four years. Afterall, it should be treated like a business. Maybe the endless spending would stop.

But before I dive into this article, it’s time to choose the music.

Zakk Wylde, “Book of Shadows II”, 2016, eOne
The Steel Woods, “Old News”, 2019, Woods Music

Good mellow music with meaning. Ok, let’s get back to it.

2024, a very polarizing year, and prior as well. What do I mean by that?
When I was growing up, I watched the adults, in confusion of course, as it led up to election day, I don’t recall such a division between strangers and family. We also didn’t have the digital media creating whatever tales to post swaying the opinions from soon-to-be voters, and I mean both sides, but it’s more than that. There wasn’t the massive fighting of who could vote and who couldn’t. Election day came and adults got out to vote. At the end of the evening the votes were totaled, and the winner declared by Wednesday morning following. Boom, president declared. Simple, some people are happy, some sad.

In 2024 there have been published remarks on how the election will not be certified if one candidate in particular wins, or there will be a civil war in the streets if the other wins, and so on. It has become an election of personalities, not policy. Admittedly, I have dislikes of personalities, but I am also envisioning who has the American citizen first on the policy list?

We should take care of our own home before we try to babysit the world outside our borders, all the while the kids run rampant within our borders and cause chaos. There needs to be a stronger adherence to the ground rules (the Constitution) in our politics. This includes Congress, the Senate, as well as the president.  There are a few great publications of that document, that may help jog the memory of our politicians, US Constitution 101: From the Bill of Rights to the Judicial Branch, (Tom Richey, 2024) for instance.
American citizens 18 years and older can vote, and non-citizens cannot, not in a federal election, period. The 15^th, 19^th, 24^th, and 26^th Amendments qualify the rules for voting over the last 175 years. Rules, Amendments, it doesn’t matter what you call them, it is the basic STANDARD for voting in a United States of America federal election. Follow them, don’t change them for your own benefit. There will always be a winner and loser in an election. Live with it.

So why have we watched the last 3 elections with politicians trying to change the “rules” to benefit their party? Are the rules of the game no longer the way to go? This system has been working for over 200 years, and suddenly in the last 20 years we need change. We have election day, not election week, and the same Swing states that cry out that they will need more time for counting votes, have this same cry every time they do not like a candidate, why? If the issues happened before, fix them before the next election, simple, or is it just very bad management, if so, get new management?
They can predict the issues, but not fix the issues.
A state such as Florida can complete the voting process on the day of election, but Nevada can’t.
Something just doesn’t pass the smell test.

I began this post during the middle of election day, November 5, 2024, and was prepared for the worst, but as midnight rounded, I was relieved to find there wasn’t a complete upheaval in the world.
I am not going to talk about policy, personality, or elite politics, I just want to chat about what a difference we have seen in the last two generations.
The day of working together or having opposing views while having a civil debate seems to be a memory.
The Founding Fathers had opposing views, they debated, argued, walked away from the table, and came back to keep trying to work together to make a master document that would age with time, all the while protecting our freedoms as American citizens. Is it perfect, no, but it is written with our freedom from government tyranny in focus. What needed to be added later became the Bill of Rights to include specific freedoms for every American citizen. I suggest everyone read through this at least once.

As we go through the next few days, we will see what happens, and hope this country stays civil. It will be nice if we can all merge together and get rid of this great divide. In my opinion the great divide was caused by politicians with an agenda to fill their pockets no matter the cost to the American citizen.

"Politics, after all, is largely about power. And power goes to the core of our issues of control and narcissism and need to be right and tendency to divide the human race into 'us' vs. 'them.'" John Ortberg

But that’s just me “Thinking Out Loud”.

References

Tom Richey, Peter Paccone. 2024. US Constitution 101: From the Bill of Rights to the Judicial Branch. Unknown : Adams Media, 2024. 9781507223017.