An American Election Story

Before I get started, let me say this. Political posts are notorious for getting people in a mighty huff. This is not a post that is meant to do that. I am not writing this in order to convince anyone of any particular way of thinking. It is not written to put down any particular side of the argument. It is simply a post where I can record my personal thoughts about this election and our democracy. So if you are a person who easily gets irate and offended if you hear political thoughts that don't mirror your own, you might skip this one. But if you are someone who is interested in hearing other's views, even if they aren't exactly like yours, read on. Hopefully I don't say anything too irritating. And please, please, please if you feel the need to leave a comment, please keep it positive and kind. I'm not interested in creating a political angerfest here.
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This is a post that I have wanted to write for awhile, but I wasn't quite sure how to say what was in my heart. There is so much. But unfortunately, sometimes my thoughts were reactionary after getting mightily irritated by a comment that a friend or acquaintance has made on facebook or in my presence. And experience tells me that those are the very worst sort of posts to make, full of sound and fury, but not terribly helpful or constructive in any way.

On Tuesday we went to the polls for a presidential election. Sure, there were other ballot initiatives and statewide and local candidates, but let's not kid ourselves here. The people voting were there to choose the president. I've voted in municipal and statewide elections before, and trust me ... when there is not a presidential choice involved I am able to walk right in the door, grab a ballot and be done voting in under 45 seconds. No lines. On Tuesday there was a significant line. Waynesville moved its polling place to the old middle school after having it at the current middle school for several years. It does improve traffic tie-ups in these big elections, but it isn't the most practical spot when there are a ton of people voting at once. However, as I arrived and saw the giant line there I decided to wait it out and make sure I got my vote counted. I was expecting a long, long wait, but I was super pleased with our local election volunteers. They were cheerful and happy and moved all of us along very quickly. I ended up only having to wait for less than 30 minutes. It was a well oiled machine. Some of my favorite things about waiting in line ... No one. And I repeat ... No one sat around and talked hatefully about their voting choices. I have sat in line before where I have had to endure long moments of hate talk about opposing views, and that really, really irritates me. (More on that later.) Everyone was talking about their life and the things going on in the community. I felt like I was in the middle of a giant block party. All that was missing was some great music and barbecue. We were all there with the intention of voting, probably in very different ways, but we were all there as Americans, performing a sacred right we have as citizens to take part in our democracy. I almost teared up at the sight (but I will admit that I was feeling a bit loopy after a sleepless night at the time). The other thing that I loved was that when there was a first time voter there the election workers would yell out "First Time Voter!", and then all of us would clap for them. That was awesome! I wish they had done that for me when I first voted. I saw one old woman who looked to be in her seventies who was there to vote for the first time. Way cool! Waynesville finally moved to an electronic sign in system when we arrived. It made things very efficient, and I think that that is why our lines moved so quickly. I did kind of miss signing my name in the giant election book though. That always made me feel like I was involved in a grass roots sort of activity. And it was always neat to see Herman's signature and his mom's signature above mine when I signed in.

So I voted. It was cool. I did my part to participate in our democracy. And then I waited with the rest of the country to see the results. I can't watch the television on election night anymore. It is ridiculous to listen to the pundits on both sides of the aisle talk and talk and talk and talk as they fill time between announcements of their election calls. Instead I just kept my laptop on an election results site, getting the same info I would have gotten by watching television, minus the annoying drivel. By 9:00 I could see that things were going to be very difficult for Mitt Romney as his chances for winning the electoral college got slimmer and slimmer. And by 10:30 it was all done, the election being called for President Obama.

And then the hateful facebook posts began.

Herman has been a big Romney supporter since he first ran for president in 2008. Herman and his brother-in-law Jason worked at some phone banks for him and even went to Iowa to canvass for him during the Iowa caucuses. He really, really liked Romney a lot, and this was the first time that Herman has been willing to not only vote for a candidate, but also to put some boots on the ground for him as well. And before anyone thinks that this is simply a Mormon Supporting a Mormon thing, Herman really had strong reasons for supporting Romney that had nothing to do with religion. He thought that Romney was the best person to lead our country in a time of economic uncertainty because of his business success and his experience turning  around struggling businesses and the Salt Lake City Olympics. He could make a very good argument for why Romney would be a great president. We even got the opportunity to meet him that year at a relatively small dinner. I thought that Romney was very kind and personable. After hearing him speak I thought that he sounded horribly stilted and awkward when he was saying bad things about the Democrats, but when he got around to sharing his feelings about the country and his plan for getting it on the right track I thought that he sounded wonderful and inspiring. I turned to Herman and said, "I think I could vote for this guy." I really think that the nastiness of campaigning just didn't suit him. He's too nice of a guy, and politics is nasty, unfortunately. I think that is why too many people labeled him as wooden on the campaign trail. Once you could peel away the dirt and grime of the election you could see the genuinely good and caring person underneath. I wish more people could have seen him as we saw him that night. Frankly, I don't know how anyone decides that they want to run for president. It is such a rotten, dirty sport. You can see the candidates age right before your eyes as they face the unforgiving populace.

Anyway, knowing how much Herman loved Romney, I knew he was going to be disappointed on Tuesday night. And he was. He couldn't imagine how the election could have turned out the way that it had. I really felt for him. He was devastated. So much so that he couldn't really sleep that night. It was hard for him. But I will say this for him ... at the conclusion of the election he did not turn his disappointment into angry facebook rants or hateful knockdowns of his fellow Americans who had re-elected President Obama. He was able to express his disappointment in a constructive way and figure out how he planned to move into the future. I really appreciated this.

I wish I could say that the rest of my friends acted in the same rational and adult way. I have to be honest and say that I am floored by the paranoia that surrounds President Obama's time in office. I read a facebook conversation that occurred after a post by a friend of mine before the election where her mother calmly explained that we needed to get Obama out of office because another four years GUARANTEED that we would not be able to vote for president ever again. We would become a communist dictatorship where he would hold ultimate power over every single aspect of our lives. ... Hold on for a second while I put on my scary background music. ...  Now here's the deal ... there are plenty of legitimate reasons for a person to be strongly against a second Obama term. There are lots of policy decisions that he has made that might make someone prefer a different direction. But the immediate movement of our country into a communist society where we lose our right to vote is not one of them. I hate to break it to you, but although we do have a powerful modern day American presidency, we still have three distinct branches of government, put in place specifically to prevent this from happening. Whether our president is Democratic or Republican or something altogether different (and I am sooooooo ready for the rise of some sort of alternative party. I truly cannot stand either one of these groups. I think I'm with George Washington who warned that political parties could lead to the death of our democracy. ... but I digress.) our country is not going to take a steep dive off the cliff in four short years. We survived Clinton. We survived Bush. We will survive Obama. Really.

The hateful political discourse that has been present in these past few years has been astounding. Instead of seeing those as opposing views simply as people who have opposing views, we have become a people who see the other side as the enemy. And not just the enemy. Often people label those with opposing views as servants of evil, here to lead us right into the Apocalypse. There is only black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. There is no gray. Are there some issues where I believe that there is no room for compromise? Yes. But not EVERY. SINGLE. ISSUE. Our country is a country that was founded because people who felt very strongly about their political beliefs were able to sit together and find solutions that didn't make everyone 100% happy, but it did move the country forward. I think my jaw may have actually fallen to the floor one day during Girls Camp as I was chopping vegetables with a group of adult leaders, and one of the ladies there said that she believed that the country would be better if we could just kick all of the liberals out. Really. Inside I was fuming, but I held my tongue, because, really, what good would I accomplish after having a throw down over politics in the middle of Girls Camp? But do you know what I wanted to say? Those "liberals" are my parents. They are many of my great friends from college and high school. On some issues that would be me. Are you really saying that you want to throw my family and me out of my country? Really? I think that some of the media and talk radio hosts have painted liberals as these crazy pot-loving, anti-religious, free love promoting, lazy people whose only desire is to sit on our lazy butts and make the rest of the people pay for our lazy lifestyles while we use our foodstamps to buy cookies and donuts when we aren't exchanging them for drugs and alcohol on the street. But you know what? The "liberals" I know are all hard working, tax paying people who genuinely love and care for our country. They have good families, and they participate in our communities all over the place in constructive and meaningful ways. Their political beliefs might be different than those of the conservatives, but it isn't because they have this desire to see our country dissolve into nothingness. They love our country. Many of them are very religious people. And they have the same right to be here as anyone else. Are there vocal crazies out there among the liberal flock? Sure. But there are plenty of crazy conservatives as well. Nutjobs should not define an entire group. We are a strong nation because of our differences and our ability to live together in spite of them. Some people seriously need to remember this.

I just wish that more of us could learn how to express our political feelings in a constructive way. It is totally okay to be unhappy that Romney lost. Or, if things had been differently, it would have been okay to be upset that Obama had lost. We have a right to express those feelings. But to do so by calling others names and posting hateful speech on social networking sites does not strengthen our country. It does not make us better. Would people say the same hateful things to the face of those that they demonize? I would hope not. It is easy to talk hatefully to a computer screen, but it is cowardly. Instead I really wish that if people felt the need to use social media to vent their political feelings they would focus on policies, not people. To denigrate others who disagree with you and to assign your own reasons for why they do so is childish and unproductive. Believe it or not, many people voting for either candidate had well-reasoned thoughts for doing so. Just because you don't agree with them does not mean that they were bumbling idiots who lacked reason and intelligence. They just believe differently. I'm sure there were plenty of Obama supporters who supported him for dumb reasons. I am sure that the same could be said for Romney supporters. The fact is, we live in a democracy where almost everyone gets to vote, and everyone does include the idiots as well as the well-informed. It's just a fact.

I purposely am not going to say who I voted for. Brother Bogle loves to loudly announce that I am a Democrat whenever I am at church, just to see me get red in the face. I do admit to being liberal leaning, but I really do think of myself as an independent who really can't stand either party or their platforms. I never vote a straight party line when I vote, so you would find it hard to pinpoint where my votes lie in each election. It doesn't matter to this post. What matters is that I voted. I looked at the issues, decided what mattered to me, and then I voted. Whether we voted for the same candidate or not matters little. There are countries in the world where there are major riots when elections don't go the way people want them to go. We are not one of them. That is another reason I love this country. After the crazy 2000 election where Gore won the popular vote, but Bush won the electoral college after a lot of waiting and lawyering in Florida, it would have been easy for the country to descend into chaos. But we didn't. George W. Bush was our president. There were many who disagreed with him on many policies and they may have grumbled about how he got there, but they (or at least most of them) never claimed that he was not legitimate. The same (for the most part) will be true with Obama. There may be crazies out there who will fight the birth certificate issue until the day they die, but most people are rational and realize that he is our president and the productive thing to do is to work with him to push him to do the things we'd prefer, and push him to not do the things we'd rather not have him promote. It is how democracy works, messy as it can sometimes be.

So let us rejoice in the ability to live in a land where we have the right to vote for our leaders, but also for the opportunity we have to live in a land where we are free to disagree openly with one another. It is a blessing to be able to do so. But remember, we are not cardboard cutouts out there, easily to label and dismiss as un-American or unintelligent or whatever nasty name comes out in facebook posts and talk radio and internet chatter. We are people with real emotions and real ideas and real hope for our future. All sides are important to the debate. We are not the enemy. We are Americans. All of us.