Penny Thoughts: Now What
The fever has broken. The boil has been lanced. The Nation can begin to take a deep breath. The overwhelming majority of votes has been cast, but as expected, the counting lingers on. Regardless of who the ultimate winner is for our Presidency, there is a pressing question America will face. It is elegant in is simplicity, yet complex in its resolution.
It is posed as, “O.K., now what?”
Pondering that question, it might serve well to reflect on what we were led to believe about this election by all sources.
- “This is the most important election in American history!”
- “This is the most important election of our lifetimes.”
- “This is the most important election in human history!”
And, indeed, the election of 2020 will go down in our memories as one of the most impactful and significant political contests we can recall. The pronounced differences between the platforms of the two parties were vivid and obvious. Still, it is notable that while the 2020 election had its monumental distinctions marked by the profound dichotomy of positions of the two parties, there have been other elections in America which have been no less significant in their own rights.
In 1912, Woodrow Wilson defeated William Howard Taft and ushered in the first “Progressive” President initiating a plethora of measures which began the erosion of states’ rights and the expansion of a strong centralized government.
In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected to the first of his four terms and dealt with a Nation recovering from economic devastation and then leading a Nation in a World War.
In 1960, John Fitzgerald Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon even though Nixon won the popular vote and was significant because Kennedy was a Roman Catholic.
The 2000 election results were ultimately determined by the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Florida counting system of votes needed to cease and that George W. Bush was declared the winner.
The 2020 election had a great deal in common with the 1860 election. Both elections involved two diametrically opposed concepts of how our Nation should be run and should be governed. What America endured after the 1860 election may or may not portend what may happen today. We simply do not know yet.
It might be consoling to share, nevertheless, what my sainted grandfather (yes, I canonized him myself) from Thomasville, Georgia, taught me a bit more than six decades ago. “Life ain’t always gonna be easy…but it’s always gonna be.” Whether or not it’s easy or hard or just in between, it still is “gonna be”. The measure of how and who we are is not what has happened regardless of how it has happened, but it is what we do next.
Because what we do next will determine every bit of who we are as a people, what form of government we will have, and, ultimately what we will be as a civilization.
So, again, now what?
Posing a series of rhetorical question might assist in indicating an answer. They are not designed to trap or to beg the question. Rather, they are intended to prompt some personal introspection regarding beliefs in our liberties and in a collective assessment regarding our concepts of continuity as a Nation.
- Will we re-assess our trust level of the main-stream media?
- How long will we continue to accept censorship by the media and by the social media?
- Will we continue to allow politicians to assault our sensibilities with their lying and planned deceit only to justify it with the plaintiff epithet, “Well, all politicians do that,”?
- How will our trust level of “the science” be affected?
- Will we surrender reporting and teaching American history to the revisionists who want to reject many of the principles our Founders believed in to establish America?
- Will we defer to the more concentrated population centers for the direction of our Republic?
- Will there be any serious prospect of reasoned discussion between citizens with differing opinions?
- Will we continue the path of creating a “victim” status for targeted segments of our population?
- How many liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will we be willing to surrender in the name of safety?
- Will we finally realize that for our democratic Republic to survive each citizen must participate by being independently well informed?
- How will we respond to the violence which will ensue as a result of ANTIFA and BLM rioting?
- Will we still believe that America is the “land of the free and the home of the brave” which promotes “liberty and justice for all”?
And after we have done our best to address these questions, what still looms is the challenge, and the intrigue, of the overriding inquiry…NOW WHAT??
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of The West Alabama Watchman.