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my words. By the time you read this column it will all be over but the shouting.
Someone will have won the election and someone will have lost. Be that as it may,
what I predict is that wholesale shopping and entertainment will soar the weekend
after the election.
At my house, I have taken to my bed to read every
night for about the past month since I am fed up with the election coverage. I
know what I believe and am refusing to stuff my brain with any more details that
I have heard over and over again for the past year or so. This has been the longest
political campaign in my history. I am worn out.
You can tell who is a
political junkie; you see them on the street each day walking around looking like
someone from the night of the living dead. Those vacant eyes staring off into
space, the drool drying on the corners of their mouths and their hair all askew
from positioning themselves in a prone position in front of a large screen television
for hours and hours on end. Many of America’s women will likely flock to beauty
parlors all over the country after Tuesday of next week to get the creases taken
out of their hair. The health clubs will once again be overwhelmed as men will
return in droves to lose those extra pounds they have accumulated from months
of ‘comfort’ foods. We are all political zombies at this point in time. This election
has occupied the conversations of nearly every meeting and social event I have
attended for at least the past seven or eight months. I’ll be glad when it’s all
over and done with and I know a lot of others who feel the same.
My wife
refuses to go quietly into the night and I can hear her talking back to the television
late into the night while I try to concentrate on some murder mystery paragraph
which I know I have read at least ten times. I try not to listen to her, but I
find it impossible and then have to run downstairs from time to time to see if
I missed anything. Usually it was for naught, since it was something all of us
had heard a hundred times before just repeated in a different manner. Never once
since we started the campaign has the television ever answered any of her pithy
comments.
This election has virtually paralyzed the entire nation. If
you ask anyone what they are doing for upcoming holidays, the standard answer
goes something like… “I don’t know, we’re waiting to see how the election turns
out.” The entire world seems to be holding its collective breath waiting to see
who is going to move into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Now, listen to me…whatever
happens the end is not here. We will all survive just as we have done in the past.
All is not lost no matter how this turns out. Abe Lincoln once said something
along the lines of … “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of
the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Well
said and very appropriate for this election.
No,
the American people cannot all be fooled all of the time. One person will untimely
be elected to the highest office in our land. That person will have to earn and
maintain the respect of the nation or they will not succeed. We have seen this
happen time after time.
Campaign promises are just those, promises. But
the problem is the people listen and expect those promises to be put into effect.
If not and they are broken the citizens will remember and react accordingly.
In
years gone by, it would have been easier for elected officials to get way with
saying one thing and then doing another, but not today. With all of the resources
we have at our fingers, the internet, cell phones, cable television, blogs, nothing
major happens that isn’t available to the world in a matter of minutes. Politicians
who lie and mislead are found out and brought to task for their misdeeds. Even
those residing in the White House.
So, do not be dismayed. No matter if
your candidate loses this election, the nation will survive and the pendulum will
swing back to the correct position. It may take a while, but it will happen. Do
not lose faith and do not give up just because your party may have lost. In spite
of all that has been done and said over the past year, we are all still Americans
and we should act like Americans.
There will be another day and another
campaign to fight.
Right now, we just need to get out of the house, go
to a restaurant and get some sun.
Have a good week.
©
Peary Perry
November 5, 2008 column
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