Opinion: The 2016 Election

The Beginning of the End

Perhaps no presidential election in our lifetime, has been more contentious and divisive as the one now taking shape for 2016.

Both of the two major parties have never produced such weak and questionable candidates for the highest office in the land as they have with such less than illustrious candidates in the persons of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump.

With a population of over 300,000,000 people, one would hope that a nation of this size could somehow produce a crop of candidates that the nation as a whole could place some trust in.

Instead we have forced upon us a group of people as candidates who would be much better suited to be on a wanted poster than a campaign flyer.

We have a candidate in Hillary Clinton whose main objectives are that she should be elected because she would be the first woman elected president, or because she feels that it is her “turn” to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. No one’s qualifications for president should be predicated by gender or the misguided notion that it is somehow their “turn” to hold that office. Ones “turn” at something is usually relegated to games and not in the real life world of politics where the determining factors should be ability, experience, and character. Anything less is detrimental to that office and is most definitely detrimental to the nation as a whole.

Then we have a candidate in Bernie Sanders who generally always voted with the Democrat Party during his tenure in Washington, ran as an Independent, and is a self avowed Socialist. That is until he decided to run for President as a Democratic candidate. A man, who like most of his followers, does not have an understanding of the most basic economics, yet he, and especially his followers stop their critical thinking when they hear the words “free”, and either ignore or don’t care that the “free” he promises would only lead to economic slavery to taxes and government dependance for us, our children, and our grandchildren.

Last, but not least, we have a candidate in Donald Trump who is willing to say anything and do anything to get elected to the office of President of the United States. A man who can blatantly denigrate minorities, women, and the disabled, and get away with it. A man who talks in a loud, arrogant braggadocio, and gives his supporters his policies in such general, shallow terms, that even he doesn’t know what his policies and plans are. Indeed, when he is questioned about those policies, like the quintessential politician his answers ramble in a broad expanse of nothingness that never reveals just what his ideas are. Thus leaving one to come to the conclusion that all he has are general talking points, and hasn’t given his own vague, vapid statements any real thought. Yet his supporters will laugh, applaud and cheer, and with their mob mentality defend with their dying breaths the glaringly obvious shortcomings of their chosen one, even when those shortcomings and actions should alarm even the most dim witted amongst us.

There was once a time in this country of ours, when those we elected to the office of President, were statesmen...leaders…moral...those in whom we placed our trust and believed that whatever they did they did because they thought it best for us, and our country. People who led by example, and not people who make a mockery of everything that is good, noble, and decent like today’s leaders.

Now all we can see is that statesmanship is dead. Like the Roman Empire before us, we have leaders who place themselves above the good of the United States and all Americans. Leaders who are characters instead of having character. Leaders who throw off all semblance of morality and fairness, because morality and fairness don’t matter to Americans anymore. Americans don’t want morality and fairness. They want lies and half-truths. They want all that they can get and future generations be damned.

Is this what we want? Is this what we want for our children and our grandchildren, and their children after them? Is this what America has become?

God save the United States of America.