The Election We Deserve

It's been a while since I've written in this blog because, frankly, the choices in this election disgust me.  I keep saying to myself that America is better than this, we should have better choices to hold the highest elected office in the country.   Then I'm reminded of something my parents always told me; you get what you deserve in life.  What they meant was if you are an adult, whatever your present situation or status is, it's a result of choices that you have made over the course of your life.  That's when it hit me, this is the election that we Americans deserve.

American society is as polarized as I can remember in my lifetime, and this election is a direct reflection of that polarization.  You see it everywhere.   The opening weekend of this NFL season had the same fans who were calling San Francisco 49ers quarterback Collin Kaepernick unpatriotic for peacefully protesting by kneeling during the national anthem booing President Obama while he was making a statement remembering the 9/11 attacks.   I'm sure those people see no contradictions in those actions because to them the national anthem and the flag represent America but President Barrack Hussein Obama does not.  They see no irony in that position.  This is where we are as a country.   

Thanks to the internet and social media, we now live in a country where we can have access to only the news that reinforces our predetermined positions.   Ever since Rush Limbaugh proved in the 90's that there was money to be made in media outlets dividing Americans, more and more entrepreneurs have been creating new ways to divide us.   Of course there was a liberal bias in the media prior to the advent of Fox News, but it was nowhere near the extent that conservatives claimed.  And the fact is most reporters before the advent of Fox attempted to be objective reporters of the facts.  But Roger Ailes and Fox News proved that there was money to be made in completely biased reporting, and the rest of cable news quickly followed.   And now we are at a point where you can get completely partisan news on television or the internet all day long.   You can watch Fox if you're conservative or MSNBC if you're liberal and never have to really get an opposing point of view.   You can subscribe to Brietbart or the Drudge report on the internet and have conservative propaganda delivered to your email box every day, or you can subscribe to Raw Story or The Huffington Post and get liberal propaganda delivered to your email box all day.  This is where we are is a country.  

There have been a series of incidents captured on video where police have killed unarmed black people who were stopped for minor incidents and walked away with no legal consequences.  At the same time, we saw white criminals like Dylan Roof taken alive after killing nine people in a South Carolina church.  Not only was he taken alive, but the police actually made a stop at Burger King to get him some food because he was hungry.   These incidents lead to the formation of the #blacklives matter movement.  This is literally a movement that was simply asking police to stop killing black people.  Many on the right immediately came back with an #alllivesmatter movement, which evidently missed the point that every one of these high profile incidents involved a black victim.  Some United States Congressmen on the right even labeled #blacklivesmatter a terrorist group as did FOX News number one host Bill O'Reilly who vowed to have them disbanded.  This is where we are as a country.

There is big money to be made in dividing Americans, so we are divided daily.   We are divided based on race.  We are divided based on income.   We are divided based on geography.  We are divided based on religion.  We are divided based on sexual preference.  We are divided based on education.   The media loves the divisive stories because when they touch one of these hot button topics they ignite our passions, our fears, and we watch more intently.  What better way to get the Latino community to pay attention than to keep playing clips of Donald Trump saying that Mexicans are rapists?   What better way to get poor people to pay attention than to keep saying that Hillary Clinton won't release her Wall Street transcripts?  What better way to get African Americans fired up than to keep playing clips of Donald Trump saying we can't walk in our neighborhoods without being shot?  What better way to stir up resentment in white Americans than to keep playing clips of Hillary calling half of Trump supporters deplorables?  The media keeps putting the most incendiary stuff out there, and we keep eating it up.   This is where we are as a country.

And finally there is the internet and social media.   I will be the first to extol the virtues of social media, but there is also a dark side.  That dark side allows many of us to express our ugliest and most revolting thoughts behind the safety of a keyboard and computer screen only to those we deem most likely to be receptive to those thoughts.   Worse yet a lot of the websites that post news stories let us post things anonymously.  If you go and read the comments section under any article that deals with anything remotely controversial (and even some things that don't appear to be controversial at all, like the President's daughter's admission to Harvard) you will find some of the most vile and disgusting things you will ever hear coming from a human being directed at another.   This is the real America.  This is who we are as a country.

Which brings me to this election.   Of the 321 million people in this country, we are left to choose from two millionaires from New York to be President.  One is a reality TV show star who is a prototypical con man.   He refuses to release his tax returns.  He lies so shamelessly and constantly that reporters don't even try to get the truth out of him anymore.  He's insulted Latinos, African Americans, muslims, women, and veterans on the campaign trail.  He mocked a handicapped reporter at one of his rallies.  He repeatedly retweets white supremacists on Twitter.  He has talked on numerous occasions about how he would like to date his daughter.   The other candidate has been in public life for nearly 30 years and has been involved in scandals for nearly the entire time.  From her great commodities trading results in Arkansas to Whitewater to Vince Foster's suicide to the emails and the Clinton Foundation.   Her supporters will say none of those scandals ever resulted in anything, but the fact is there is a trail of people who have been charged and convicted or plead guilty in many of those scandals, and every poll shows that people just don't trust her.   But the Republican primary voters rebuked their party leaders and gave us Donald Trump as their candidate.   And the Democratic establishment made sure that no one was going to beat Hillary Clinton to be their candidate.   This is where we are as a country.

The Bible says you reap what you sow.  My personal hero Malcolm X once talked about chickens coming home to roost.   America was on the right trajectory coming out of the civil rights movement. The progress was slow and painful but it was evident.   We were moving towards being more inclusive, more diverse, more tolerant of people who did not look like us or who worshipped differently from us.   Somewhere along the line we turned backwards.   I'm not sure it began with Rush Limbaugh, but I do think Rush was the first to figure out how to make money by pitting us against each other.   This being America, it didn't take other entrepreneurs long to catch on and copycat.   For the last 25 years in this country these entrepreneurs have been dividing us, and we fell for it.   Instead of continuing to embrace the differences that made this country great we retreated to our tribes and developed this "us versus them" mentality.   Most of us can easily get through the week without once having a meaningful conversation about an important topic with someone who has a different point of view than we do.    That is why we are left with these two deeply flawed candidates.   I love this country as much as anyone.   That's why this election is so disappointing.

As my parents always told me, you get what you deserve in life.  This is where we are as a country.  This is the election we deserve.