Stepping outside my front door into the world I asked myself today if I felt safe.  The reasonable answer to the question is that I don’t feel unsafe.  The election is raising questions that are unsettling, but the unsettled state of the nation doesn’t make me feel unsafe.  Our wedding anniversary comes every August 12th, and this year I have a particularly good feeling about the marriage that has endured for more than 60 year.  I am never bothered with feelings that the marriage was in any way a mistake.  I wouldn’t change anything about my family.  I have been retired for more than a decade, even from that teaching job I did for seven years after retirement from the the main job of my lifetime.  There isn’t anything about any of that which I would change if I had some kind of magic that could make such changes possible.  Twenty years seems a very short period of time, and I am aware that if I live twenty years more I will endure past the age of 100.  Wow!  I still am not feeling unsafe in this world, the only world I know.  The election is bringing up questions that don’t have easy answers, but I’ve decided to stop saying that if that certain candidate should happen to be elected to the office of President, I would move to another country.  I’ve asked myself if I should stop saying it because I now believe he won’t win the election or if saying it is a political statement too elementary to be meaningful or that saying it means I would abandon my country under certain circumstances.  I have decided that I have always liked leaving the United States, but I like even more coming back to it.  NO… I am here for the long haul—for the long run.  

Whoever wins the election, the people who are ridiculous enough to elect a totally wrong person to serve as President are going to be here after the election  My first responsibility as a citizen of this good country is to celebrate my own citizenship by refusing to give it up. Instead of knuckling under a yoke of ignorance that threatens our democracy, I shall stand against ignorance, and I shall try to make my stand with grace and kindness.  I shall try very hard not to fall into the trap of becoming mean like some whose political ideas are different from mine.  I am determined to give enough thought to my own political responses so my responses won’t hurt even the demagogues.