TGI Election Day!

Tomorrow is election day- 2014- and I am more exhausted than excited. In fact, I'll be happy when it's over. The half-truths, the practiced lines, the name-calling-it's not any worse in kind than it's always been... but with social media and 24-7 television, it's insufferable! Besides, the candidates are so, well, ordinary. There's not a transforming figure among them, and I'm getting tired of the old line about choosing between the lesser of two evils. It's not that I don't get the joke, but there's too much at stake to find it funny.

I believe in hard-work and accountability, but I also believe in safety nets and helping hands. I believe that the Bible embraces these acts as well, but the liberals can't spell "accountability" and the conservatives can't spell "compassion." The world seems to be filled with extremists. Isn't there a liberal somewhere who knows that a policy of handouts doesn't work? And isn't there a conservative out there somewhere who knows that a helping hand can be a great investment? The arguments are the same tired arguments that I heard (and voiced) in the sixties... but the world has changed dramatically in the past fifty years. The population is growing at a staggering rate, and there are simply too many people in many, many places. There is a coalition of minorities that seems to threaten traditional ways of life,. and in what was already an individualistic society, the individual is now god in America. Most politicians are wealthy and out-of-touch, and most of them want lifetime jobs. Poor people resent the rich... and the rich blame the poor people for being poor. There are problems everywhere- but we've agreed not to mention them...and the silence makes healing impossible.

No one is doing anything but running for office and/or attempting to hold on to office... and our issues are too big for that.  Someone once told me that if you're young and conservative, you're hard-hearted; but if you're old and liberal, you're soft-headed, and that might be my problem in a nutshell.
Perhaps I'm the one who is changing. Maybe I'm just getting old, but the lives that our children will lead...are worth fighting for, and not just by voting for the lesser of two evils. I suppose I will vote tomorrow, but I really don't have my heart in it! And there's some part of me that says "it will only encourage them."