A Prayer for Election Season

In church on Sunday, one of our prayers asked God for help that in the midst of this divisive election season that we might refrain from demonizing the other side.  I was so struck by this!  

Demonization of everyone not like “us” is everywhere.  Clinton v. Trump v. Third Parties v. DNC and on and on, and the candidates are leading the charge to the bottom.  Oddly enough, after Hillary’s now infamous “basket of deplorables” comment, I came across a recent interview of Bill Clinton online where he was not demonizing Trump supporters.  He was talking about looking at the life circumstances of many of the people in the demographics that contain the strongest Trump supporters.  He was talking with Trevor Noah about looking at where these people were coming from.  I am no fan of many of the policies championed and enacted by Bill Clinton, but at least he offered some lip service to the need to look at things from the other side’s perspective. 

So much of the anger underlying this demonization online is misdirected anger. I would summarize my recent Facebook reads in the statement,“Dubya was the fault of all you Nader loving contrarians!” I would ask, where is the anger at the Supreme Court for stopping the count or for the State of Florida who purged 181,157 voters purged from the rolls in the lead up to the 2000 election?  Where is the outrage over the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County where it is estimated that they took around 2,800 votes from Gore and gave them to Pat Buchanan (Palm Beach Post.)  Looking at 2016, where is the concern over our voting process itself?  Look at what happened in NY, Brooklyn, Arizona and California.  Where is the concern, the outrage over the probability that our democracy could be hacked in a million different ways, that our voting system is not secure?  There is so much that is wrong with our country that deserves our energy, attention and outrage!  

Creating hard feelings isn’t going to help us on Nov. 9.  No matter which candidate moves into the White House next, it is going to be a tough road for most of us.  If we have alienated each other, if we have broken the ties of friendship, if we have lost the ability to listen, if we continue to blame each other rather than acknowledging and looking honestly at the powerful forces that have set the stage what is for so many of us a horrible choice, then we will not be able to work together for a better world in the face of what is to come.