Healing and Consideration After the Election - Nov 9, 2016

   Editor's note:  I had published some stream-of-consciousness thoughts on the eve of the election.  I have since re-thought, edited and changed some of my comments, so I am re-publishing this with reflections on the election results.

                People on all sides have this fantasy that if their favorite candidates get elected, it will instantly solve all the world’s problems and make everything wonderful without any of us having to do anything other than vote.    

    It won’t.

    The scars and wounds that have been inflicted on the country and mass consciousness by the anger and vitriol of the past 18 months -- the past eight years under Obama's divisive presence in the White House -- will still be there, raw, gaping and in much need of healing.  

    We have not been at war, physically as with the Civil War, but the emotional trauma and sense of divisiveness that has been festering for many years, is real and massive. If we continue to allow, endorse and encourage separatist groups and individuals in their childish narcissism, I predict we soon will find ourselves in a  physical civil war.  There have been and continue to be massive, violent protests across the country over Trump's election.
   Many colleges have instituted grief counseling and campus-wide cry-in's to coddle and soothe students who were "traumatized" by Trump's election.  Why are colleges indulging and supporting this kind of immaturity instead of teaching students how to live in the real world and cope as adults? 

      It is my perception that Hillary Clinton doesn't give a damn about anybody but Hillary. She has a record of dishonesty, meanness, incompetence, greed and graft, stretching back to when she was lawyering with the Rose Law Firm and she and her phony, philandering, rapist husband were in the Arkansas governor's mansion.  
     As far as I'm concerned Hillary and Obama murdered four people from our Benghazi embassy staff in September 2012 by refusing to provide them with appropriate security and military support.  Obama and Hillary murdered them, the same as if they had picked up a gun and pulled the trigger themselves.  Then they lied about it and are still lying about it-- all to maintain the illusion that they have conquered terrorism in that part of the world.   

     Hillary’s and Obama’s failures and lies are not seen by people who live in the echo chamber of liberalism which contains nothing but self-serving, gossip-mongering, fear-promoting sophistry.     

     To me, all the hype and novelty about the first female American President breaking glass ceilings seems a shallow justification to vote for or against anybody.  But, for the sake of discussion, let's turn the Presidential ticket upside down:
      First of all, Hillary would be disqualified because of her questionable email usage, selling access to foreign entities, and the pay-for-play schemes to grift money to the Clinton Foundation, which pretends to be a charity.  
    Now what if Trump had been the Democrat candidate?  (Many of our #neverTrump Republican friends swear that he really is more liberal and Democrat than he is Republican or conservative.)  Let us further imagine that somebody like Carly Fiorina or Sarah Palin was the Republican candidate.    

     Would you be voting for the woman in the name of breaking the glass ceiling, or would you be supporting Trump?  
        I don't expect Trump to fix everything instantly, despite his many boasts.   It has taken us over 60 years to get ourselves into the mess that we are now in  -- especially in the dumbing down of education. Millions of Americans across three, if not four generations, don't know how to think. They have little ability or willingness to objectively consider life from different points of view and come to logical conclusions based on an understanding of history, science, economics, current events, human nature and their own experiences.  

        We don't know how to look and listen for truth.  We fear and even hate anything or anybody that might threaten the status quo and force us to reevaluate long-held cherished beliefs, habits and patterns.     

       In his book “The Art of Selfishness” David Seabury, recalled:  “…A man once threatened to beat me in order to change my mind.  He meant it, too.  But before he started, I said quietly: ‘After we are through fighting, my mind won’t be changed.  You can kill me, you can’t convince me.  You’ll remember this when resting in jail’.  My firmness overcame his rage. We didn’t fight.”

       The dependence on the media, government, religion, medicine, unions, teachers, family, friends, our cell phones, computers and lies from our favorite politicians, has caused us to stray so far from our purpose and design as human beings, that we are at war with ourselves -- inside ourselves -- fighting against our own nature.  

    As a favorite teacher/philosopher friend said: "People want instant, simple answers and easy, carefree living. They don't want enlightenment."  

    In our naiveté we believe that governments making laws will fix all the world's problems and turn life into some magical fairy tale kingdom where there is no strife or stress.  

     Does anybody consider the herculean effort required to enforce all the laws and regulations that are floating around the earth right now? How should we deal with contradicting laws and regulations? What do we do with people who don't care about laws and regulations?

   Thinking requires grappling with the unknown.  It requires opening ourselves up to different perspectives and sources of information and then deciding for ourselves.  

    Thinking is hard work.  For many of us it's too hard and too scary.  Yet we are designed to be thinking creatures.  Trying to separate ourselves and each other from that part of our humanity, only perpetuates ignorance, pain and division.