A nightmare will end this coming Tuesday…or Wednesday…or in December. Despite record numbers of early and absentee voters, most of us will go to the polls on Tuesday to end one nightmare…the nightmare of the Election of 2016. Unfortunately, I believe, and many others I have listened to believe, a new nightmare will begin regardless of which presidential candidate wins.

The issues bothering us as a nation will not be resolved simply because one presidential candidate is elected, because a slew of congressmen and senators at both the national and state levels are elected, or a dog catcher is elected at the local level. Fear, racism, ISIS and terrorism, bigotry, abortion, global climate change, misogyny, congressional logjams, crime, education, gun control or rights, sucking at the welfare teat, border security and illegals, LGBT rights, military spending, unequitable taxation, Russia, etc. are a few which enter my mind in no order. My internal voices argue over these issues just as the same arguments rage on social media, on news programming and in our local watering holes. We all know what’s wrong, we just seem to be unable to correct it…because we can’t come to or refuse to come to a consensus.

Most troubling for me is our blatant hatred for each other and how it goes against the one aspect of a presidential candidate’s campaign which do I support…” We are stronger together.” We cannot be fearful and be together. We cannot be afraid of compromise and be together. We cannot hate the other side and be together. A much tougher one is we can’t feel alienated by our own leaders and be together. I am at a loss at how to get us to come together…and most troubling is hearing calls for secession or armed revolt. I think we tried that once upon a time and it didn’t work out too well for the nearly seven hundred thousand who died so let’s put that bullshit aside.

Our history is fraught with periods of division…I wonder if it is not what makes us…us. Isolationism and the Great Depression prior to World War Two, Civil Rights, Viet Nam, Watergate, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the Iran-Contra Affair, just to name a few coming readily to my mind where, our elected officials battled it out in the hallowed halls of government. Somehow we rose above it, mostly came together, AND MADE IT WORK. That is democracy I think.

I see an interesting first hundred days. I see an interesting decade to come. I don’t see a quick fix. We still suffer from Cold War policies and Watergate, at least I do, forty years after the fact. I am still suspicious of our nation’s leaders. Despite my suspicions I believe our freedoms are the best in the world and at my age, I don’t want to have to start over with something new. I don’t want to have to wake up every day from some new nightmare. November the Ninth is a time for us to come together…not further segment.

For more of Don Miller’s unique views of life and humor try http://goo.gl/lomuQf