You've Got To Be Kidding Me. - Can people be respectful during an election cycle?

INTRODUCTION:

Greetings to all. Each yearly quarter, I view the statistics on my website. Primarily, which blog post topics receive the most views? Although I am not surprised, my posts about the characteristics of people and politics get 10 to 20 times more ideas. This doesn't surprise me because people enjoy learning about others, and politics is always a hot topic. I used to stray away from politics, but now, I find myself leaning towards it due to our country's and society's state of affairs.

In addition, these are the two most requested and related topics I receive requests to discuss. That said, I also cannot forget to address the other requests for topics I receive. When I started this blog, and still today, there are two types of blogs. Single-topic blogs and diversified blogs. A single-topic blog would be a food blog, a self-help blog, and other blogs that revolve around a single topic. A diversified blog discusses a variety of topics.

Due to my education, life's work, and experience, I chose to write a diversified blog because I wanted my blog to attract a diversified group of people. Not a single targeted audience. Like a writer who may only write in one genre, I write in multiple genres for the same reason. This week should have been my August video blog post. However, my schedule was easier to control when I lived in New England because the summer months were shorter.

Now living in Florida, my summer months are longer. My summer months are my busiest times of the year. I am an avid boater and do considerable boat captaining work in the summer. During the winter, I focus on writing my books. I've lived in Florida for almost two years and am still working on balancing my work-life balance and trying to fit it all in. Creating, producing, and editing a video blog takes much more time than a written blog; again, time was not on my side this month. I apologize for that, and I will have a video blog post in September.

I wanted to save this topic for a video blog post, but my impatience and email requests to discuss this topic were such that I wrote about it this month. In 2016 and 2020, we experienced something new with elections. Although people always had opinions, these last two election cycles caused great harm to families, friends, co-workers, and others.

OPINIONS:

I said this in one of my previous blog posts. "Opinions are like rear ends. Everyone has one." Man, isn't that the truth? However, each person has the right to their own opinion. It's what they do with that opinion that causes the problem. I think back to 2016 when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went against each other. My sister and I never agreed, which caused many arguments, especially at a holiday dinner table. We usually put a stop to it before it became an issue. However, how many families, friends, and co-workers did not? How many became dire enemies and stopped talking? I know quite of few that succumbed to that.

The hardest thing to do regarding opinions is to respect the other person's opinion. Why? Because we all feel we are right and are perfectly ready to wear boxing gloves to prove it.

The question I pose to you is this. Did all that arguing solve anything? If everyone voted as they should, the results were not changed based on personal disagreements. There are far more people voting than you and the person you disagree with.

Then came 2020. Trump and Biden. I don't need to remind you about all the controversy surrounding that election. The allegations and accusations were overwhelming. To this day, there are still questions about the voting that took place during that election. Guess what. We will NEVER know the truth surrounding that election and the allegations of fraud.

I believe in a different solution. Although many of them turned out to be false, some did prove to have merit. If only one was confirmed to have a problem, I believe a new election with better monitoring should have occurred.

Let me tell you why. Not for one minute because of who I wanted to win, regardless of who that was, because this is about principle, but because people, by nature, need closure. In our minds, we do not do well with questions with no answers. WE WANT CLOSURE. We want to be sure. That is the human condition. Like it or not, we all suffer from it. Think about any time in your life when you did not get answers and have closure. I will bet you, to this day, you still wonder about it occasionally. No, you are not a freak. You are normal.

Not having answers and closure causes a wide degree of problems. It can cause anguish and upset you, making you feel like you can't move on. This is especially true in relationships but applies to everything in life. When we speak of closure, it is referred to more in the setting of relationships, but closure applies to it all. As people, we must have a resolution. As people, another form of the human condition is placing blame. SOMEONE HAS TO BE WRONG OR AT FAULT. Without closure, we don't know who to blame. Remember that closure gives us the means to understand what went wrong and why. In a sense, it gives us someone or something to blame. This takes the responsibility away from us. Now we can move forward.

Many did NOT have that closure after the 2020 election. The question is, will it carry over to 2024? It already has. One side is already figuring out how to address early voting and ballot harvesting to match the other and have an even playing field.

PERSONAL OPINION: The only people who should vote early are those with medical reasons and service men and women overseas. ID and proof of citizenship were required to vote. Elections for me and many of you are NOT our first rodeo. We voted on one day for decades, and the polls closed at 8 p.m. PERIOD. Most of the time, by the 11 o'clock news that night, we knew who our next President was. In today's MODERN world, we have managed to turn elections into chaos.

There is an old saying. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I get it. Much of this was the result of the pandemic. No one wanted to go to the polls. I went to the polls to vote. Honestly, they were the safest run polling I have ever seen. Everyone wore masks and kept their distance. Anything touched by a person was discarded. Guess what. According to our President, the pandemic is over. Get back to the way it used to be.

Let me give you an example. In 2020, my mom, who had passed away five years earlier, received a ballot in the mail. Promptly, we called the voting registrar, reported that she was deceased, and destroyed the ballot. However, how many others went out in error across the country, were signed, and sent in? See my point? It leads the American people always to wonder. We need to regain trust and credibility in our election process. It's that simple.

CAN PEOPLE HANDLE IT?

I do not believe so. With all the doubt in the minds of the American people and the questionable scandals surrounding the two main front runners, people will argue for yet another election cycle. WHY? Because people will be people. It is their nature and with just cause, and it has now become the standard of how we act during an election cycle.

In most cases, people's actions result from what has been placed upon them. Either internally or from external sources. These sources include but are not limited to the candidates, the government, and the news media. Everyone picks a side—something the news media is NOT supposed to do but does it so well. As Denzel Washington said once in an interview, It doesn't have to be the truth. It's about who gets it out there and says it first. Take a look.

Hit that link and listen. Tell me if that does not make perfect sense. This is what the news media has turned people into. We cannot trust what we read, what we hear, and what we watch. Then, we ask ourselves, why are things so screwed up? Can we expect people to handle this? How could we? How can we expect people to act any particular way when their opinions are not based on facts but on the opinions of others? Opinions that we are told are facts, and every other reporting station is wrong and does not have the right facts. Talk about the ultimate confusion.

I understand. Every news station has its sources. They do not all share the same facts, and certainly not equally. Hence the term, breaking news. However, when the facts are opposite, something is usually not right in the pot. Time to welcome bias into the mix. In any speech given by anyone, different people can pull different audio clips to fit their reporting narrative. Therefore, unless you saw the entire speech, which very few people do, a reporting entity could make it sound and present it any way they choose. Therefore, I do not blame people. We are only victims of what we read, see, and hear.

Take this into a friendly debate at home, at work, or amongst friends, and now you have a tremendous difference of opinion where each person BELIEVES they are right. Let the fireworks begin. The shame of it all is that people do not see this. They take this all in as gospel. Hey, the news said it, so it must be true.

IN CLOSING:

I've said this a thousand times. Voting is the most important right we all have. It is our means to implement change. No one should complain about things if they did;t exercise their right to vote. However, voting comes with responsibility. The responsibility is to be informed. You have a responsibility to research who you are voting for and not just take the word of a news media network. I won't bore you with all the problems we have. You know them as well as I do. We all live with them daily.

You don't vote for a Democrat or Republican because you are a registered Democrat or Republican. The same applies to liberals and conservatives. You vote for the individual you feel will get the job done. If that matches your party lines, then so be it. If not, that's fine as well. Never listen to just one news network. Listen to many. Hear the different views. Yes, it can get confusing, but you can find your way through the confusion when you listen to the candidates.

Voting is a tremendous responsibility.

You are not just voting for the present times. You are voting for how the future will be molded for your children and grandchildren. I hope some newer voters will read this and take notes from it. Learn from our mistakes so you do not make the same ones.

People do not need to argue amongst themselves. Make enemies and no longer talk to lifelong friends. People only need to listen and discuss their views, why they have them, and where they obtained them. Most intelligent people can weed through the crap and get to the truth.

This is the process of progress and the process of voting. A process that has been around for centuries. A process that at one time worked the way it should. A process that the American people trusted and relied on. This is called exercising your rights properly. Thank you.

Please feel free to leave comments, or if you have a topic you would like me to discuss, you can email me at crondina@caesarrondinaauthor.com. Thank you.

Be safe, stay well, and focus on being happy. And remember to always: