“The chickens come home to roost” is a phrase I remember from my childhood years growing up in rural Minnesota. It was used to warn youngsters that they would suffer the consequences for their mistakes or bad behavior.
I take no satisfaction in the current protests around our country following this presidential election - that “Trump is not my President” - but it certainly seems to be a case of the chickens coming home to roost. When President Obama was elected, the extreme right of our nation’s political spectrum publicly proclaimed in strident terms that “Obama is not OUR President” and some elected Republican members of Congress vowed to not cooperate with him, to make every effort to make the President fail, and even attempted to de-legitimize his Presidency. An unintended consequence of that action is that, now that their candidate has been elected as President, there are members of the opposition who are protesting and proclaiming that “Trump is not my President”. Public protests of the election results do not reflect in a positive way upon our democracy, but my common sense tells me that if you didn’t object to it happening for the last eight years, then you have no claim to object to it now. I objected then, and I object now. As citizens we can and should protest against, and work to change laws, policies, and government actions that are against the principles of our democracy and the common good. Where the system needs changing, we should be open to changing it. One of those changes is the Electoral College which makes a mockery of the “one person, one vote” principle, and which has twice allowed in the course of the last five presidential elections for the person who did not get the most popular votes to win the election. We have a lot of work to do to protect the progress we have made as a nation, and to continue to move forward. There are many causes in which for us to expend our efforts. Even though it is tempting to savor the chickens coming home to roost, I hope we will put our energies to work in positive and progressive ways.
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Time for Common Sense AgainCommon sense commmentary by Joel Kreger (unless noted and credited to a guest writer) Archives
November 2018
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