Nov 4---The World Is Watching Us

Friends are good, right? Not tag-a-long friends or users, but real friends. Our current president, by all accounts a social frat-like guy, has shown surprising indifference to our nation's friends and allies. And that has cost us.

November 4 is a day the world will remember for a long time. We will send a message to the world with our ballots. That message will be one of two things: either we care about our international friends and want to resume our rightful place as a beacon of hope for the free world, or that we really are indifferent to our relationships with our so-called allies.

There is, of course, so much more one could talk about. The wars, the economy, the environment, the transference of wealth and power from the public to the corporate arena, the shrinkage of the middle class, the stacking of the Supreme Court, etc.

When I attend memorial services, something which tends to happen more frequently as we get older, this is when folks talk openly about things that matter most. To most people, nothing matters more than friends, family, the bonds of love between them and how we choose to spend our precious time on earth.

It is the same with nations which are, after all, just large groups of people with whom we have more in common than we generally care to acknowledge. So as the world watches us today, let us not disappoint. Seldom does an election offer such a stark contrast between competing world views.

As a lifetime student of politics, a political science major, a brother of a well-known political writer who immersed us both in the world of politics since childhood, I am struck by how important this election has become. To me, it is by far the most important election of my lifetime. This will either be the saddest or the happiest election day of my life. Soon we will know.