Getting too Worked Up

 

There are stories in the news about people breaking with friends or even relatives over displeasure with which candidate and party they favor in tomorrow’s election. This strikes me as being both wrong and a little nutty. Yet it seems to happen a lot. (I experienced a mild version of it in early 2017 after Trump became president. A relative ordered me out of his house, not for voting for Trump, which I had not, but for joking about Trump. Apparently to him Trump was so dark an evil as to make humor or levity on the subject too inappropriate or immoral to tolerate. That was strange and not profitable for any concerned.) It is not only that a person’s voting preferences are not the most important thing about him. It is that they usually are among the far less important things about him and a truly asinine criterion for judging him as a human being. It is a corrosive thing to see politics as more important than it is, to make it determinative of one’s opinions of others and even one’s outlook on life. It’s just politics after all. In this election we have two lousy candidates, one of whom will win and do some bad things. It matters, but we are lucky to live in a country where it does not matter that much. The country’s culture, principles, and people are far more important and far better than its politicians and government. Regardless of which of the two losers wins the election, the country and the republic will abide. People on both sides who are giving apocalyptic warnings about the other side should look around, calm down, and see that. They are not doing us any good.