Today and Tomorrow Are Important Days in our Nation’s History

Today (the day I am writing this-01/05/2021), we have a couple of elections in the state of Georgia that will affect the rest of the country for possibly a very long time. I simply want to share my perspective.

I don’t really care where you stand politically but throughout our history as a nation it has always been better to have a divided government. In my opinion, it is important right now for Republicans to keep control of the U.S. Senate. There are two seats open at this moment (for another five or so hours) that will be either filled with Republicans or Democrats. If they are split Republicans will retain control of the Senate. Obviously if Republicans win both the same result will occur. But, if Democrats win both of these elections then they will gain control of the Senate and the entire federal government will be run by Democrats. Half, or nearly half of the country, disagree at one level or another with the Democratic party. But, there have been loose promises made by those same Democrats that if they win control in the Senate then they will try to procure that control for a very long time. What they are talking about is adding two states to our 50 state union…2 states that will vote Democrat: Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. This is nothing more than a power grab and it shouldn’t be tolerated by anyone.

The other scuttlebutt coming from the Democrat side of the aisle is adding enough Supreme Court Justices to tip the court in a Democratic direction. Of course, we always hear that judges should be apolitical but obviously this is not the case. A judge promises to uphold the constitution (the actual law of the land) but that does not always happen and so from a political perspective to ‘pack’ the court with people you know will always vote in your favor is quite a power grab again.

Division is good. Strife is good. Stress is good. It causes us to grow. When it comes to our Federal and State governments division helps slow the ability for one side to gain too much control. Ideas are good when they have to be debated and fought for. Ideas that simply slide through without any checks and balances are dangerous. I have always thought this and I have never been one to be taken by having even a Republican side without control. Division slows the ability for power grabs. I want division. I want the Republicans to win today.

Tomorrow we have the congressional certification of the Presidential election that happened in November. The Electoral College met in December to essentially give the stamp of approval on the November election and so it has. That is a check in the balance of control and power and it is good. We have one or two more checks in this process and one of them happens tomorrow. If only one congressman or senator raises an objection to the election results in any given state then it is required to be debated, addressed and discussed. Our founding fathers wanted to be sure that cheating would be limited, knowing the human tendency to such things.

We have heard, whether you believe it or not, that there was a bunch of cheating in this particular election. There are hundreds of people who have placed themselves in jeopardy and sworn that they witnessed cheating at the precinct levels. The fact that there was cheating is well established. The how much is not. I could list a bunch of reasons why the election has given me pause as to why I would accept it as anything other than questionable…no matter what the outcome. But I will only talk about one that I think is the most pressing issue of our day.

The media, including social media, were complicit in not sharing the whole truth about a number of things in the run up to this past November Presidential election. There were actually detailed studies done after the fact to determine that if people knew certain pieces of information, about either candidate, they would have changed their vote. This would have been a very different election. The problem with just this one thing is that we simply cannot know how the election should have turned out. Because of this I am glad that congress has the opportunity to have one last go at trying to figure all of that out. And, in the future, we damned well better figure out how to share information honestly and truthfully and also learn how to run elections that are fair and honest. Any time too much power is in the hands of a single individual, whether it be a poll worker, a senator, a president, a judge or whatever, it is apt to be abused and misused. Let’s figure out a way to keep that from happening in the future.

Because some Republican Senators and Congressmen/women have vowed to challenge the electoral college results we have some people very up in arms over it. The reaction is ridiculous. As I mentioned above, this is simply a constitutional part of the process to give us the most protection possible that we have a fair and accurate election. Besides it is quite hypocritical to be questioning this right to challenge election results on the day of the congressional certification as it has been done at least a half a dozen times before. In recent history the Democrats used this particular day to challenge the Presidential election results in 1969, 2001, 2005 and 2017. These are all years where ‘their’ guy or gal did not win the election nor get the electoral votes needed. It was their right and obligation to challenge at this point in the process and it is the right and obligation of the Republicans to do the same.

Whatever the result I am happy that the process has checks and balances built into it…otherwise it would be far too easy to go the way of Venezuela or some other country where election results are consistently rigged to favor those already in power. If that is something you want in the United States I would say you are living in the wrong country. It is wonderful that we can move and make choices that way. If you want a system of government that is rigged and where power brokers remain in power indefinitely then I believe you are in the huge minority. Having too much power in anyone’s (or group’s) hands is dangerous.

Let’s keep the division going and the questions rolling. Somewhere in there the highest and best (and perhaps even the truth) may be found.

An update on the day’s voting in Georgia:

In an insane twist of events polling places are still not allowing observers. In at least one case a judge had to intervene to require people to be able to observe. It is the law. It is very confusing. What are people hiding? This is insane. We are going to have another long fight on our hands because poll workers are not following the law. Insane. Sad. I don’t care who wins this is wrong. We have serious election problems here and they need to be fixed.