Friday, January 20, 2017

Inauguration Day Thoughts

The day has finally come when we (The United States) will again make a peaceful transition of power and hand the reins of government to another person and another party.

This year's inauguration day is marked by as much controversy, criticism and doubt as any.
I suppose that I should watch it, ... but I won't. Not out of protest or anything like that, I just won't.
I haven't watched most of the past ceremonies and I will surely see many video highlights and hear much about what was said and done in the coming days.

I am not at all a doomsday liberal that thinks the world as we know it is coming to an end. I agree with our out-going President that the US will be okay. I know that there will be many changes and challenges in the coming days. Things will be done that will have great impact on the day to day lives of many people. There will be some that reap benefits from policy changes and there will be many that are harmed by them.
And in less than two years, we - the voting people of the US, will have the opportunity to change the face of Congress by voting for or against those policies as we elect a new House and a third of the Senate.

That's the way our system works.
I know that in today's world, our elections are bought and paid for by people with great donations and great power. At some point, we have to accept that we (the individual voters) have been the ones that allow that to take place. Even in the midst of the accusation of foreign tampering in the most recent election, it still comes down to each voter either buying into the the news (or fake news) and casting a ballot.

We have the government that we elected.
And we get to keep it for the next two years.

If history is any predictor of the future, things will change again...and we will continue to survive and thrive as a nation.
Celebrate if you are a Trump supporter!
Even though gloating, taunting and poor sportsmanship seem to have been normalized in the sporting world, this is not sport ... it's life. So celebrate without gloating. Be a good sport!
And if you are not ...
There is no need for exhibiting poor sportsmanship from your side, either.
Be gracious.
Go high.
If it was a sporting event and we were athletes, we would simply go into training with the idea of a coming rematch. We would examine what went wrong and work to change that. That's not a bad practice in politics...or life.
Adapt. Change. Grow.

John <><

2 comments:

Mike said...

It's hard to go high when it's so dark.

Big Sky Heidi said...

Peaceful transitions are not to be taken lightly. We don't need instability