The priceless benefit of a clear conscience

There are two absolutes which apply to all members of the human species: 1.) the heart of every living one of us will eventually stop beating and 2.) we will be expected to pay our way legally via taxation or illegally however we can until it does. Beyond those two givens there are no guarantees in this life. For the two-thirds or so of us who live a full lifespan, we will hopefully have an opportunity to look back with the benefit of hindsight at our time on Earth and, before we rejoin the Cosmos, be able to reflect on certain things. Important things. Things like the chances we took, the decisions we made, the people we influenced and the changes we helped make happen. In doing so we will hopefully arrive at a sense of validation that our existence here on this rock spinning through space had some degree of profound meaning.

The pristine appeal of the nation that is the United States arises from the dichotomy of what it represents at its core, that being the absolute BEST and the absolute WORST that humanity can possibly offer. Our best example of this was when descendants of people who tolerated economic might built upon the involuntary servitude of human chattel assembled and supported an infrastructure the pinnacle endeavor of which was putting members of our species on another celestial body not once, not twice but multiple times and safely returned them to the Earth. That one was and is hard to top, but it underscores the premise that we do achieve greater things when we work together as a nation of unified individuals under leadership that welcomes and promotes new and useful ideas, is guided by science and demonstrable evidence, celebrates the diversity of its citizens and fosters economic fairness for all. America, for better or worse, has all but found anonymity among nations since our relatively recent departure from the values embodied in the phrase “E pluribus unum.” When future scholars pen the history of the United States from November of year 2016 C.E. to the present, we should expect few if any positive reviews of our nation’s contributions to humanity. The World after all expects and certainly deserves better from us. When we fail as a people to endear ourselves to the community of nations, we may have a long road back to restoring the lost trust of allies. Shameless indulgence in national self-absorption does not lend to anything resembling American exceptionalism. Any reasonable outside observer could not be blamed for dismissing such a self-proclaimed trait as just another brick in the battered wall of latter-day American mythology. This facilitation of decline was what many of us feared four years ago. It is my hope that this past week marks the beginning of the end of the era of that downward trend.

Although events of the past week have given us a great deal of hope for change moving forward, processing our nation’s failures of the past Presidential term may require some time. Our national departure from reason over the past four years represents one of the main motivations Yours Truly has for keeping a daily personal journal since 1975. Indeed, the foreword for all forty-six volumes reads,

“A daily account of my own human experience in the first person and a description of occasional lapses in sanity; mine and the World’s.”

So, what can we take from this era of national disunity where the worst elements of all of America were embolden and empowered by a narrowly elected incompetent executive? For the here and now, our 232 year old electoral process seems to have worked yet again despite all its flaws and criticism. For everyone who helped make that error of 2016 a one-term aberration, that means anyone who took an interest and became actively involved at any time since November 9th four years ago in pushing back against the low end of humanity as it sought to drown all of us in the stench of its nasty muck, hold your heads up high! That includes anyone who stepped up and became a candidate for public office, anyone who volunteered to knock doors, phone bank or otherwise work for a candidate or a cause like a state question, anyone who donated money to a candidate or cause, anyone who stepped up to volunteer as a poll worker or notary public, or anyone who directly involved themselves in the front line of protests, marches or rallies for any cause seeking redress of grievances and subjected themselves to tear gas, pepper shot or other overzealous police intervention in an effort to make their community, state or nation into what President George H.W. Bush described as a “kinder, gentler place,” you may hereby claim the coveted intangible of a CLEAR CONSCIENCE! It is the opinion of this observer that for rest of your days in this life that you may bask in the priceless benefit of knowing you did everything you could to effect positive change in your sphere of influence. When your heart takes its final beat and shortly thereafter when your obituary is composed, the very least anyone can say about your life and times is that you stood for something. That is the only way to claim an ever so small sliver of what every member of the human species has sought from the beginning of our existence, that being immortality. Here’s to better days ahead!