I Am So Frightened
I Am So Frightened
In the early 1980s I worked in the Middle East for an oil-field support company as a drilling mud specialist. The company moved my wife and our two year old son to Athens, Greece to live. I worked in Saudi Arabia or Egypt for 3-6 weeks and went home to Athens for 3-6 weeks off. Unlike our service men, we lived "on the economy" in an apartment, shopped locally and made friends among our Greek neighbors.
During the 1980 presidential campaign, a Greek acquaintance hotly complained that Europeans should be allowed to vote in the US elections because, he said, Americans were so ill-informed and unsophisticated that they had elected a mere peanut farmer! Jimmy Carter was not my favorite president and I supported Ronald Reagan for president that fall. However I adamantly defended Carter's qualifications as an Annapolis graduate with a degree in engineering, a commissioned Naval officer and successful agricultural businessman. I used the few Greek words I'd learned from cab drivers and told him to buzz-off.
Today I don't know what I could say in defending either candidate. Both major candidates are people of questionable character, morality and judgment. In my opinion, neither are "fit for the office".
There is another related topic that comes out of the current round of politics. As a child and younger man I was always under the impression that the USA was The Model for the democratic process; an example for all the world. Sure, there were some places where shady things happened. I'd heard of rumors of vote stealing in Chicago during the 1960 election of JFK. Attempts to skew the 1970 election through sharp practices, fraud and felonious burglary was at the root of the Water gate Scandal that brought Nixon's downfall. The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP!) was using governmental power to retain power as is usual in third-world dictatorships and communist countries.
At the end of the 2004 election, the Bush-Gore race made me want to throw-up with all the drama in Florida and the Supreme Court. Yeah, I wanted Bush to win, but c'mon now—a confusing ballot layout and hanging "chads"—THAT is how it is done? Maybe in Nigeia or Venezuela.
And now there is more doubt about the integrity of the process on a much larger scale. Trump's loud talk about "rigging" the election can be brushed off as election year hyperbole, but now there is video evidence of a national program of voter fraud and violent interference in campaign events by Democrat supporters. There is evidence of criminal allusion between the Democrat National Committee, the Clinton Campaign, several Political Action Committees and perhaps the Obama White House. Somebody has fire-bombed the state headquarters of the Republican Party4—n North Carolina, not Croatia.
Bush-Gore or Clinton Trump: Setting issues and ideology aside, the most frightening thing for me is the thought that there is now significant doubt about the legitimacy of the outcome. For two hundred-forty years the United States has had eighty or so peaceful transitions of power from one party to another. The loser concedes and the victor makes a triumphant address to his followers. Months later everyone comes together for the swearing-in and the Republic goes on. Will that happen this November and February?
Dear God I hope so.
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