Let the people speak

Guest Opinion

Lowell Erickson

The crazy season is upon us. Perhaps it never left. Campaign signs sprout like mushrooms. Party faithful attend rallies, chant slogans and man phone banks. Old friends become new enemies. Normally tolerant and considerate folks post Internet diatribes and forward professionally prepared attack pieces without bothering to check for truth.

Anonymous and indefensible character attacks fill the TV and computer screens. Hate, slander and libel are declared protected speech. Ethics, morality and patriotism are declared to be virtues belonging only to people holding a specific religious and political viewpoint. Words like "values" and "world view" become the new secret handshake for admission to the inner circle of the chosen. It seems not only candidates can be demagogues.

"Truth" is not the intent of the folks conducting this spectacle. "Truth" has become the collateral damage of a mini-war internal to our nation, involving us all.

We, the people, must demand an end to it. We all have a responsibility to fellow citizens to speak and write only what we know to be true. Our trust and our democracy are being abused. We must openly challenge the irresponsible who abuse us with distortions, half-truths and lies. Democracy can function effectively only if the people can make rational decisions based on truth. We have a right to insist on the truth from our political candidates, their campaigns and their supporters.

We have the vote to reject and punish the irresponsible for their abuse of our trust and our democracy. If you remember this at election time and vote accordingly, we can put an end to this.

We have been silent too long and this has gone too far. Regardless of your frustrations, you must not abstain. If need be, vote against those who dissemble and deceive. Their intent is clear and they will do it again.

Let the people speak. Vote. Democracy cannot survive unless you vote.

Between now and election day, think also about what is happening here and in the entire world. The past is truly past. Our nation and the world have irrevocably changed and we cannot go back. Maybe we should not want to.

What faces us today has never happened before. History can tell us of past events and why things happened, but it cannot reliably guide us when the conditions we face have no precedent. For that we need men and women who know their history, but look to the future.

We need competent men and women who live in today's world to govern our country, who understand and truly respect our past, our heritage, the Constitution, the American people and the Great American Experiment. Cast your vote for truth, for responsibility and for democracy ... and against demagoguery.

Choose carefully, but choose. We need to be one America again.

Lowell Erickson is a Sequim resident.