Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Our Fate is in God's Hands. May He be Merciful

Once again, Thomas Sowell has struck the proverbial nail on its proverbial head with the article over at Townhall.com entitled Our Political Predicament. I have often pondered the notion that it is exceedingly unfair to be tethered to political decisions that you personally can see are wrong, but you personally have to live with because your "neighbors" wanted it that way. I particularly remember the famous bumper sticker in the Clinton years "Don't Blame Me. I Voted for Bush." For youngsters in the readership, that would be Bush the Elder.  Such said it all, but made no difference.  We all got our belly full of Clintonian policies, whether we voted for them or not.

This then is the unfairness of democracies, and it is what the Founders hoped to protect us from by putting in safeguards that made our's a Republic.  The House of Representatives would be elected by the People.  The Senate would be selected by State Legislatures, and the President would be elected by the Electoral College based on votes by the people.  In case of a tie, the President would then be selected by the House of Representatives.  It was a delicately tuned system.  Unfortunately, this Constitutional balancing act has been breached by various means, including an Amendment turning the Senate into an arm of the people rather than the States, which has slowly reduced the power of State governments in making National law.  This in turn made other Amendments possible with which the States likely would not have gone along.  Our history throughout the Twentieth Century was changed because of the 17th Amendment.

So it is we find ourselves in a predicament:
My own take on this election is that the voter is in a situation much like that of an American fighter pilot in World War II, whose plane has been hit by enemy fire out over the Pacific Ocean and is beginning to burst into flames.
If he bails out, there is no guarantee that his parachute will open. But even if he lands safely in the ocean, he may be eaten by sharks. If he comes down on land, he may be captured by the Japanese and tortured and/or killed.
In other words, there are huge and potentially fatal risks. But, if he remains in the plane, he is doomed for certain. To me, Donald Trump represents multiple and potentially fatal risks. But Hillary Clinton is a certainty of disaster. Her vaunted "experience" is an experience of having repeatedly made decisions that turned out to be not merely wrong but catastrophic.

Quite so, and well said.  The analogy is an apt description of where we find ourselves.  I originally was not going to vote for the President, though I would do my duty for down ballot candidates.  But then I realized that God put me on this earth to do the best I could, not to be the perfect one.  Indeed, that is why he sent his Son into the world to take upon himself my multiple sins of commission and omission.  I, therefore, am free to eat the unclean food, so to speak.  I do not have to live as a monk, hoping to not commit a sin, yet doing so by not risking himself.  So, I will vote for Trump, and may God help us all.  For our fate is in his hands in any case.  May He yet be merciful.

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