Silence in great numbers can voice unified disapproval on Election Day
This is not an election where you simply vote “your” party. This is an election filled with stress — and consequences. All elections are contentious. All elections have winners and losers. People support their chosen candidate for personal reasons, some emotional, some based on the candidate’s record, some because they truly feel (regardless of the party line) that their chosen candidate is really the best choice. This election is different. This election will very likely leave us all losers, and greater than half of us, sore losers.
Under what we used to consider normal circumstances it was reasonable to expect that one doesn’t elect a candidate based on gender, religion or ethnicity. One elects a candidate based on experience, qualification, sincerity, honesty and integrity. So, what’s missing this time around? How about all of the above?
We can blame social media, the press, late night talk show entertainers and maybe our own guilty pleasure for political entertainment. But this isn’t funny. It’s not entertainment.
They say. She says. He says. Good Lord. Is there anyone out there saying “We say”? Isn’t that what democracy is about? Have we totally and completely lost sight of that?
It doesn’t seem right to have to vote for the candidate we dislike least. It doesn’t seem right to vote based on rejecting the choice we don’t like most. Where does that leave us? When we begin to look at the reasons why we dislike rather than approve of a candidate, we find ourselves lost in a mire of negative thinking. That makes moving forward still more difficult — and stressful.
It’s too late to reject the candidates running for president of the United States. It’s too late to say “give us someone else.” We seem to be caught between doing the “wrong thing” and doing the “wrong thing.” This is arguably one of the most important elections in our country’s history. Think long and hard about where you stand on the issues, because our next president will be faced with choices. Climate change, Supreme Court nominations, the Affordable Care Act, our presence among other nations and our involvement in their politics, struggles and status, and yes, let’s toss in our continued existence on this planet.
This election is about much more than “Let’s Make America Great Again.” It’s about much more than “I’m With Her.” It’s about our future. We all have to vote our conscience, but it seems on a number of different issues and levels, there’s not a lot to work with.
We basically have three choices: Vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, or take the “clean hands” approach. Opting for clean hands is a legitimate choice. The principle of remaining silent is an idea that is foreign to many of us, yet so is this election. We are more polarized as a nation than ever, at exactly the time we need to be a unified nation. Maybe our silence in great numbers will say more about what we want to see as a unified doorway to the future will, than making a soul-tearing choice between the lesser of two evils.
Many people have quit listening, having given up on an acceptable outcome. You have no moral obligation to vote. We know we should vote, and that voting is a civic duty, and that it can make a difference in the direction our country heads. But if you vote for the lesser of two unacceptable options, you must justify your vote, that it will promote an acceptable common good. That is a moral obligation, and if one can’t accept that, abstaining with clean hands is a moral choice. No matter who wins in November, we are left political orphans.
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton both seem more preoccupied with themselves and their own agendas than they do with holding the office of president. We know it. They don’t seem to. If we’re looking for that unified doorway, we won’t find it in this election. One of them will be elected. Taking the clean hands approach in great numbers will send a unified message that we do not approve. Silence on Election Day opens the door to future activity, not passivity. Four years from now in 2020, we can show one of them the door out.