REFER TO GREY: Contemplations by Robert Greigos © 2007-2024

No matter who your candidate is, what the opposition is saying about him or her can be maddening. From your point of view, it's a lie, not true, a distortion, out of context, an over-simplification, just plain wrong. But they're saying it anyway, and continue to do so even though the press has fact-checked the items and found them to be totally without substance. And to make matters worse, numbskulls in the middle are believing it all. What's this election about, anyway? Truth? A better set of ideas? Plans to actually solve our problems? Our children's future? Our own futures? The well-being of our country and the communities that make it up? Or, about one-upmanship, who can throw more dirt and slime, who will come out standing on top of all the wreckage, whose self-serving "principles" and "tribe" will eventually prevail, become the conquering party, the law of the land?

Take a step back and ask yourself: how does all this mud-slinging serve the basic ideas upon which the electoral process was founded? This is what the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution actually says:

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

How does making stuff up that isn't true, or is only partially true, about the opposition help to "form a more perfect Union"? How does it serve to "establish justice"? Or, "insure domestic tranquility"? Or, "promote the general welfare"?

I saw a sign at an intersection on a backroad in Alabama the other day. It said "Help Save America. Vote Republican." I mean really, is the underlying assumption of that sign actually correct? Would a vote for a Democrat help insure the demise of the United States? And then there was an election official from Texas on the news this week who claimed that if Obama is reelected he (Obama) will "turn the keys over to the U.N." and "U.N. tanks will occupy this country". Really? Does that actually make any sense? Then, of course, there was the distorting PAC ad that implied Romney was responsible for the death of a man's wife because Romney's company, Bain Capital, in an effort to extract monetary returns on investment, helped close the company the man worked for thereby ending his health insurance coverage. What actually killed the man's wife was a disease process that might or might not have been slowed if he'd had the money to pay for treatment. That problem and others like it are real. Culpability by Romney is not, though self-serving capitalist thinking that fails to account for the consequences to others of "winning" probably is.

Wouldn't this country be great, and in the process set a great example, if intelligent adults chosen to participate on behalf of the larger population were able to sit down together and actually plan and implement programs that would help "form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility" and "promote the general welfare" as well as "secure the blessings of liberty (to do so) to ourselves and our posterity"?