Ready Or Not, The Election Is Coming

To The Reader’s Forum:

Ready or not the election of 2020 is coming and it promises to be rough, tough and fascinating. Neither side agrees with the other about much of anything. Both are firmly convinced they’re in the right. Whenever that happens, where you have two very different ideologies, passions and rhetoric tend to flare.

This is nothing new in American politics. In 1828, publications by John Quincy Adams supporters called Andrew Jackson “a cockfighter, drunkard, thief, liar and husband of a very fat wife.” In 1864, Democrat George McClellan described Abraham Lincoln as “nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.”

Our political philosophies seem to be multifactorial; the result of time and place of birth, religion, geography, occupation, race, education, ancestry, recreational preferences, finances, luck and countless other variables. I am a child of two great watersheds of western civilization, the Protestant Reformation and the American Revolution. My attitude towards my country has always been extremely positive partly because of the aspirations and experiences of my parents and those of my grandparents who were northern European immigrants. Growing up close to both sets of grandparents, I had the opportunity to ask them why they left their home countries to come here, were their expectations met, and what did they like best and least about their new country?

I try not to take elections too seriously. Sometimes my candidate wins and sometimes not — there is always another chance in two or four years! We still have a huge, beautiful strong country rich in natural and human resources, and Old Faithful still erupts every 70 minutes.

Dr. James Dahlie

Lakewood