I arrive at my opinions the way most critical thinking
people do. My opinions are derived from the study of History, the search for
truth in the midst of clutter and personal experience.
Sometimes those opinions do little more than guide me from
one decision to the next, and at times, they help me determine how I will react
to a current event but again, not much different from anyone else.
Elections do a lot more than simply determine who will be
filling a soon to be vacated seat, they tell us a lot about the electorate.
Every once in a while, the results are so astounding and the reaction to those
results so volatile that we get a peek at what truly motivates each and every
one of us.
I recall sensing more than a little trepidation when I
awoke after the election in 2008 to find out the most Socialist President in
our History had just been elected. I
felt betrayal, anger, and concern for the future of my family, business and
most of all, for the Nation.
Having spent a significant percentage of my life, living
under the shadow of the Oath I had taken to safeguard the Constitution, I was
now faced with the real possibility that in one day, all that I held dear could
be threatened and the Constitution so fundamentally changed as to render it
unrecognizable to those who fought for it.
Those were real concerns, about real, physical and
ideological things; foundational things upon which the United States was
anchored.
I remembered that overwhelming feeling of dread that all I
had sacrificed for might be swept away by a flood of emotionalism which
selected a man who would now occupy the White House for four, if not eight
years; a feeling I carried again, all night Tuesday, the eighth of November
2016.
I recall the relief, the next morning when it was finally
revealed that I would not have to endure the same sensations I had felt 8 years
prior. I also began to consider how the other fifty percent of the electorate
must be feeling having had their visions of a continuance of policies they
wanted squashed, in one day.
That is truly the extent of my empathy however; simply
understanding that when people lose something that large, what follows is a
hollowed out feeling. And so, I resolved not to jamb my rhetorical or
metaphorical finger into the collective eye of those who List a good deal
further to Port than the Victors do. They will need time to come to terms with
the loss, and time, to realize their lives will not change and certainly will
not be as dramatically affected as our would have been, if Clinton had won.
It should also be a wake-up call to those who lost to
consider what the 2008 loss meant to us and to remember that the Sun does not
Rise and Set on one political ideology; it does so for all of us.
Collectively, we need to work a lot harder at remembering
that we are all American Citizens from a wide spectrum of ideology and we still
must learn to live together because there are real threats out there who do not
care where we sit on the political spectrum; all they know is we are Americans
and they want us all, dead.
To my fellow Christian Brothers and Sisters I would say
this; we fell on unanticipated and opposite sides during this election. Maybe I
was living in a bubble in 2012 – or even 2008; assuming we were all thinking
together. This election taught me a lot, about how little I actually know about
some people I simply assumed to know. I hope the rift I observed open up, is
temporary because we, more than any other class of Americans, have more in
common. We have watched this country move God further away from the Public
Square than at any point in our History. Convincing people of that error will
take more than high-minded shunning; it will take interaction and a willingness
to accept that everyone has a history and sometimes, a lot of spiritual scar
tissue.
Personally, I feel hope for the future because even though
I tend to be that curmudgeon who hates change, this time around, I truly feel
like there is a chance to dig our way out of the pit we have watched widen,
these past 25 years. It is going to require that we all think differently than
we have been – not like some hyphenated variety of organic cucumbers but an
actual definable, like-minded, concerned, industrious, caring people.
You know; Americans!
Semper Fi;
John Bernard
