The Electorate
Our biggest challenge is electing politicians worthy of the country they represent. Politicians who stop tearing the country down every time they lose.
That was the admonition I heard from a news show host this morning.
The host went on to say that this country is stronger than it has been in decades. The dollar is at a generational high. Our military is well-funded and well-trained. Culturally, we are paying attention and giving space to voices that have long been denied that space.
Are we perfect?
No. Not hardly.
We have a great deal of challenges ahead of us, challenges that we are quite capable of addressing if only we address the biggest of all our threats – electing people worthy of the country they represent.
This was the biggest failure of 2016. The electorate, perhaps with help from ne’er do wells, failed to elect people worthy of this country.
Not only did they put a man whose sole interest was his own ambition, but the electorate put many people in positions of power who lack civility, who act out of hateful intent instead of seeking the good for all.
We, the people, have put into office people who aren’t even religious zealots, necessarily, but who think nothing of exploiting the name of Jesus for their own craven ambitions. Yes, Marjorie Taylor Greene, I am talking about you.
North Georgia, you are better than this. I know you to be a caring people. If your neighbor’s house burnt down, you’d rush over to offer the shirt off your back. Yet, in this moment, when our nation is on fire, you support a woman who uses the name of Jesus to exploit you. Do better.
Look, I love Jesus too, but the electorate who are intent on voting in people unworthy of this nation are driving me to drink more than my usual Starbucks.
We talk often about how some people see the glass half-full while others see it half-empty. But there are those of us who actually take out a ruler and measure how much liquid is in the glass. I get that those of us who do the latter are in the minority. We look for the actual evidence.
And much of the evidence has led to prison sentences and all the implications financially and personally that such consequences entails for those who pledged their allegiance to a man unworthy of the country to which they elected him.
People in Georgia, in Ohio, in Wisconsin, in Arizona, throughout this beloved country of ours are pushing forward people unworthy of the offices they seek.
Unworthy because they lack dignity, civility, humility, rationality, and responsibility.
These people, many who claim to be a people of faith, are eternal pessimists. They are the collective whiners and bleaters. They continue to throw their lot with a man who is the ultimate malcontent.
Former President Fusspot.
My granny, who loved Jesus her whole life long, didn’t tolerate bellyachers. Her most precious possession was her bible. She never owned her own home, never owned a car. I don’t know if she ever even had a bank account. Far as I know she kept what little money she had in a change purse stuffed into her apron pocket. Every now and then she’d pull a dollar from the change purse and send one of us grandkids down the hill to buy Little Debbie Oatmeal cakes. That was her sole splurge.
Yet, despite the poverty of possessions and the inflammatory issues which rendered her lame, her faith compelled her to love. She lost a much loved son to the Vietnam War, yet, not even that devastating loss rendered her embittered.
She lived a life of humility, kindness and optimism. She believed in people and hoped the best for all.
I think of her often and the example she set for me, for all of us.
I wonder why it is some people’s faith propels them to find goodness in others, and beauty all around them, while other’s people’s faith leaves them grousing about everything, and seeking the death and destruction of this life, this world.
I can’t tell you why some people who have every benefit in life spend their lives grousing about everything.
I can only urge you to not vote for them.
They are unworthy and unqualified to represent America with all the history and sacrifices that encompasses.
Karen Spears Zacharias is author of The Murder Gene, available now wherever fine books are sold.
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