Election 2016 – Five Weeks from Here to Eternity
The stakes could not be clearer and the ramifications could not be more certain. In five weeks, the most consequential election in our lifetimes will decide, once and for all, what kind of country we will be and what role this country will play in the world in which we live.
The world has turned over many times since the world was young for most of us, and the passage of time- ever greater in acceleration has brought some of us to what I will say is the autumn of our years. In that time period, we have seen a drastic and fundamental re-setting of the world order, and of our place in that world…both as a nation, and as individuals.
As I was born twenty-seven months before the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, my most remote and earliest memories remember the elation of my parents, that a Catholic could be elected president of the United States. John F. Kennedy, in his speech that cold afternoon, of January 20, 1961, said that “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, or oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
In that time, despite waging an intense cold war with the Soviet Union, the United States was largely looked to, and regarded as, the inspiration for the entire world.
Yet, the seeds of anti-Americanism started to foment in the nascent rumblings and communist revolutions from the Middle East, to Southeast Asia, to Africa, and even into South America and the Caribbean- just off of our shores. In the coming decades, America would sacrifice great treasure and countless lives, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, in the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq, in the ragged slopes of Afghanistan and other places, as the result of pursuing with all her might, to take this world to a better place.
Many of us know, first hand, the soldiers and sailors, the airmen and guardsmen, and all of the brave marines who so valiantly fought and served in these conflicts, and particularly those who made the supreme sacrifice in pursuit of defending freedom in a world, which sadly and all too often, neither sought nor appreciated, the liberty and freedom we offered her, in the end.
Since 1960, the world’s population has more than tripled, and is now knocking on the door of seven billion persons. Since the dawn of man so many eons ago, the world’s population did not reach one billion until 1900, when all four of my grandparents were very young. It took another sixty years for the world’s population to double. Then, it only took twenty-five years for it to double, once again, and it will double, yet again, when I turn ninety. So in essence, should I live so long, the world’s population will have increased five-fold in the course of my own lifetime, when it once took all of sixty years, just to double…that’s ten billion people projected to inhabit the earth in the year 2048, just thirty-two years from now.
This is an acceleration of the world’s population our good earth is ill-equipped to sustain, and in those times, the struggle to merely find nourishment and clean water will make these essentials the ultimate commodity and the very source of economic and political power.
But what kind of country stands even a chance of survival, in a world where most go without? Would a United States, drowning in the same socialism that besets and cripples much of the world, have the vibrant strength, and sense of purpose, requisite to survive in such a world? Or, will a United States, having re-sparked and re-kindled the spirit of independence and free enterprise, that spirit which once made our nation the envy of all of the rest of the world, develop the innovation and technical means necessary to confront these challenges, head on?
Can we honestly say, that ours is a country that, today, would indeed pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty… given the leadership we have at the highest levels of our government, who seek not the altruistic ideal of a world blessed with freedom, and steeped in our power to lead it, but rather sustained political power for the mere sake of retaining such power, itself?
If this does not change, and on the quick, then we are doomed to suffer the consequences of our own undoing, and subject our children, and their children, to a defenseless nation beset with all of the world’s ills, at our very own doorsteps.
We have the power to choose, and not the politicians in charge, not the major media that tries to manipulate our minds, and not the pollsters, nor the politicos of both parties, nor even the powers that be can make such a choice, for ours is still the power to decide whether or not, to change the course we have been on…a course seemed bent towards defeat and destruction.
So, this election is going to say much about the direction this country will take, as it speeds closer to the times which I have just described. My grandchildren, who will be coping with such a world, will literally live or die, based largely upon the decisions we make today, and in the subsequent direction our country takes, when we go to the polls in November.
This is why all of us should think long and hard about the votes we will cast, and the repercussions of those decisions and their impact on our progeny. The question is simply this- What kind of country will we bequeath to our children, and do we want this country to once again regain its pre-eminence and strength, in a world seemingly hell bent on our own demise ?
One way, the old and the tired and the all-too-staid, offers more of the same old, same old, where problems don’t get fixed, where distrust grows rampant, and where division and discord further alienate us from one another. If what we seek is more of what we have had, then Hillary Clinton offers such continuity.
There is, however, another way. This way seeks to throw out the textbooks of political correctness, to toss aside the march towards globalism and one-world government, and break free from the box of impotence and resignation to seek new solutions and reincarnate the can-do attitude that once was America’s gift to a world grown tired and weary. Donald Trump may or may not succeed in this endeavor, in the end, but at least he is willing to try…
…so it comes down to this. Are we willing to try? Do we have the courage to try? And if we fail to do so, at this critical convergence in our history, will we be able to explain to our grandchildren why we failed to do so when, at long last, we once had the chance? For our children, and for their children, we must learn from the mistakes of our past and protect for them the legacy of freedom, self-sufficiency and independence that will secure their future, for this and for all time.
-Drew Nickell, 3 October 2016
© 2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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