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My Final Word on the Election

 I do not know who stumbles across this blog. I started it because I lost access to my former ones; I hope to figure that out because they represent years and years of my writing, and you can find them at partsofspeaking.blogspot.com and highereducationobserver.blogspot.com.  

However, this will be a work in progress today as I make my final word on this political season. 

I start by encouraging Christian believers to read I Thessalonians. I am reading the New Testament  with my church, and I am admittedly behind. Today I finished this book. Its whole tenor struck me.  It is instruction to a group of people who are new at this whole Christianity endeavor, who came from a different world view, either pagan or Judaistic. It is basic and yet profound (aren't all basic things profound, really?)

5:13ff

Be at peace among yourselves. 14 We exhort you, brothers: Admonish the disorderly; encourage the faint-hearted; support the weak; be patient toward all. 15 See that no one returns evil for evil to anyone, but always follow after that which is good for one another and for all. 

And verse 16 begins a series of absolute statements:  

Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks. . . . Test all things.  Abstain from every form of evil. 

This seems to me to be the answer, the corrective, to the "evangelical church" love of, obsession with, politics. Yes, live at peace with all humankind, and within the body, don't put up with the nonsense that goes on in the world. You are a different culture now.   

Now, don't worry. I am not saying "hunker down, hide, no matter who wins Tuesday." Nothing in the Bible says to ignore what goes on. But it doesn't control us. 

Which brings me to my take on the candidates. 

There are a few big billboards in my small city for Jill Stein of the Green Party, bearing the message, "End the Genocide." I don't know which genocide it is speaking of, but I assume it's related to climate change, given that it's from the Green Party. This strikes me as "too little, too late, wrong time and place."  This is a deep red part of the state. I mean scarlet. 

I also see a lot of Kamala Harris billboards about Medicare, Social Security, and middle class taxes. They are bright yellow.  They may persuade a few.  

And of course, Trump is everywhere. I say this to make the point that my environment influences me, just as everyone's does.  We live in time and place. 

Kamala Harris

She might very well win. She or Trump will.  And that's the problem. We've had lesser of two evil choices before, but this year takes the cake, as the cliche goes.  She is not a good candidate. She has more negatives than positives. For me, they are:

  • inexperience
  • position on Israel
  • inauthenticity (get off the put-on accents, woman!)
  • extremism (on the leftist side) in terms of economics and culture war issues
  • absolutism on abortion (any time, anywhere, any reason, any stage of pregnancy, any woman)
  • refusing to take responsibility for the border and other failures of the Biden administration
  • saying Biden is fine when clearly he isn't
  • making promises that make no sense 
  • inarticulateness

I just don't think she's smart. But she went to law school! One may say. She was a prosecutor. She hasn't proven to most of the American people she can make the case. She may win because of who she is opposing, but she has not made the case. Will she ruin the country? Maybe, maybe not. I don't have any confidence in her ability to defend us, and defense is one of the president's main jobs, not the economy. Hopefully she will not have the Senate and House on her side.  

Donald Trump

I have one thing to say here.  January 6. Sure, it wasn't the end of democracy, and it wouldn't have been. Our institutions are strong. But it shouldn't have happened and he encouraged it.  It was shameful.  

He is a charming asshole (sorry for the profanity; he just is). I heard Hugh Hewitt defend him against Kamala Harris yesterday in an interview on the Dispatch podcast. He made a good case against her but not for Trump.  

Now, I do not think Trump is all the evils people say he is. To quote one pundit, "If Trump were Hitler, he would have repealed Obamacare." He did not ruin the country; he just coarsened it deeply.  I am sick to death of him. He switched on prolife, which doesn't bother me for his actual position (there have to be some allowances here) but because he switched on something so foundational. He doesn't have an ideology, a basis.  

However, all things considered, I would have a slightly (very slightly) better view of the future in terms of defense and economics if he won than if she did. Again, maybe a percentage point better. 

They both stink.

My conclusion

Yes, I early voted. I live in Georgia, and we're going great guns on that. And I wrote in two candidates. Mitch Daniels for president (Tom Cotton would have been an alternative, or Nikki, or even DeSantis) and myself for *Congress (you can figure out who our representative is, and you'll understand). All the other offices were Republican incumbents and there were three referenda items, which I always consider important. 

*(If I could run for Congress, my slogan would be "Me llamo Barbara, y no soy loca."  (My name is Barbara, and I am not crazy.)

I doubt this will change anyone. But this is my blog and I get to do it. 

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