“Despise evil and ungodliness, but men of ungodliness and evil, these, understand.” William Saroyan
As we creep slowly into the upcoming US election what strikes me the most is the growing absolute distrust that has been created around the idea of free and fair elections. This idea of election denial has become very disturbing.
No level of counter-information, or treatment of the voting process seems to create or re-create trust in the process, more than disturbing, this is frightening.
The whole idea of democracy, as flawed as it might be is that the people get to vote and decide who their elected representatives will be until the next election.
The essence of a democracy is that people have different viewpoints on various areas of interest and concern, and they vote for the person they believe best represents their viewpoints and agenda.
Then, based on how everyone votes, these elected parties speak to the subject matter as representatives of their voting public. It’s an imperfect system, but it gives everyone a sense that they can steward their republic through their vote.
This belief system has been insidiously damaged over the last ten years, and exponentially fractured since the election of 2020.
Very little has been done to revise the approach to a free and fair election, and many have been informed that the efforts to create more belts and braces have in some instances been done to create even more disharmony than to create faith in the process.
How the people of the United States of America manage to navigate this next election and resolve this situation in the future is the burning question of just about every other democratic nation in the world.
If the US can’t reform and resolve this distrust, how will any other democracy survive in the future?
Without the belief that your vote counts, the slippery slope of sociological confidence becomes that much steeper!
Simply being an observer of the outcome of this next election doesn’t make me feel any better about this challenge. It creates a concern with the belief of my own country’s population in our future elections as well.
Whatever happens, the resolve of the people to right this ship in future years would seem to me to be the X-factor in the future of a nation once revered for its representation as the greatest democracy on earth.
I can’t see the benefit to any single citizen in creating this disharmony, except to create a vacuum of faith with which they might take full advantage.
We can only hope that the future will be better, not worse.