Trying to stay focused on the realities of living while being inundated by the political rhetoric of the presidential campaign has been a challenge. I keep reminding myself that the country has withstood the rigors of presidential politics for well over 200 years and the basic institutions of government still stand. I am thankful that we are able to have changes of government without the turmoil and bloodshed that rocks so much of the world in these situations. It is not that the issues involved are unimportant in this race; they are. However, it is also true that no one person sitting in the Oval Office of the President of the United States can act without the wisdom of, and the cooperation of, the people. Our government is no more divided now than it has been at critical times in the past. A brief review of our history will show that we are not too many generations past the time when members of congress called out one another for duels of honor. Presidents and their families have been slandered in even more vicious terms than we are seeing now--and so have their challengers. What seems to have changed so dramatically in my lifetime is that, with modern television media and with social media outlets on the Web, people are able to react immediately--and frequently without doing any critical thinking--and reach huge audiences. Opinion is often treated as fact and people pick-and-choose from all of the available information to support their preconceived positions. There are a lot of ideas about how to break this cycle through external manipulation but none of them seem realistic. The most likely scenario in my way of thinking is that. as economic and social conditions improve (which they will regardless of who wins the White House), people will lose interest in politics until economic conditions turn bad again.
Regarding poetry: I will soon add a section to the blog for some haiku that I wrote while trying to become centered again after my wife's death nearly four years ago. More on that later.