If you were expecting a post in lyrical praise of some confection, or a recitation regarding vast oceans of sand (I always confused the two words myself), sorry to disappoint you. Just deserts is all about getting what we deserve and that is a concern in many people's minds as we contemplate the next few months and what lies beyond. What do we as a nation, as its people, deserve?
Received wisdom suggests that we should be careful what we wish for. There is more than a little truth to that expression. Will we get our just deserts, or something quite different? As voters we are asked to divine the truth on the basis of what political candidates say and what they have done. If we are acting responsibly that is just what we should do, put party affiliations and biases aside and truly listen to and judge what we hear and observe.
But you already know that is not what happens. Too often we come into this contest with our judgements already made and suit the actions to a narrative we have already fashioned. It is hard not to compare our behavior in the political arena to our fandom in sports. Unfortunately, what is at stake is far more consequential than bragging rights.
If you are expecting me to endorse a candidate in this post, that is not my objective. Rather it is a reminder of a few fundamental responsibilities we have to ourselves and future generations. First, that voting is a right we enjoy and should never give away. Like health and wealth, once lost it rarely can be recovered, and only at grave cost. We ignore it and convince ourselves of an inevitable outcome and it is a self fulfilling prophecy--abdication of our responsibility. But we cannot abdicate the outcome--once the die is cast we will live with it and get our just deserts either way.
Beyond voting, we must insist on a transparent and civil contest. Demonizing those with whom we disagree-- a tactic that has become commonplace in today's political arena says as much about us as it does those we denigrate. Irrational hatred, much less the reduction of our fellow human beings to less than human status is both contemptible and destructive. It negates the values we claim as our most sacred, our nation, and us, its citizens. We may think that those who trade in the language of fear and hatred are benign because their words are directed at others but those words betray the actions that will follow. We should never assume otherwise. Sow the seeds of resentment and the harvest will be brutal.
Whatever the outcome of this contest, we must remember that we must still live with one another. A scorched earth, one in which one group of people hold another in subjugation to their will by force or compulsion cannot, and history demonstrates, will not stand. If we have learned anything from our ceaseless wars, one lesson should stand out. No victory is final, no enemy forever, no repression endures.
When retribution comes it will be awful, and it will inevitably come if we do not find our way to peaceful resolution. The human will, faced with no other alternative, will fight to its last breath to be free. We have seen and are witnessing this lesson today in other lands, we must not permit those fires to inflame our own. The only way we can move forward as a nation is together. The alternative is stalemate--and that is just a slow descent into oblivion, or worse by far a rift so deep that it will tear us asunder.
If my words signal portents of doom it is only because I experience what I have written on a daily basis. We must all of us, regardless of our presentiments hold fast to justice, to a democratic process, to the integrity on which our country was founded or we will indeed get our just deserts.
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