Another turned page
Wednesday, November 13, 2024 A7
A lilting quote covers most satisfactorily my own sentiments at this particular time: “ Another fall, another turned page: There was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.”
That’s the way I feel … as if the bitterness of this campaign season has finally been washed away by the advent of a new season.
All that and more, after spending election night in my chair, eating a couple slices of a nice cherry pie and washing it down with … what else?
Coffee, of course. Because I can’t take popcorn – you know, those pesky kernels in your teeth?
As I reflect upon the memory of my dear sister, who since has passed on. For, she could not stand fruit pies of any kind. No accounting for taste … only I never insisted that she should. Yet, she was kind and real and my affection for her was unbounded – undiminished by the fact that she could not abide cherry pies – for instance, like that one that I was presently relishing – as I sat in my comfy chair, watching election results coming in.
Which is just like my affection for others as well, I might say. For instance, my neighbors. I really like my neighbors, and I see them out and about, here and there, driving by and honking, waving at me in the grocery store, or pumping gas at the next gas station lane. We stop and talk about this and that – yet, I never ask them to agree with me on anything as a condition of my friendship.
That’s just the way it is. And should be, by the way.
I just wish our government could understand that basic truth.
Napoleon Hill, the author of a series of how-to-succeed books, perhaps put it best: “ It is well worth remembering that the customer is the most important factor in any business. If you don’t think so, try getting along without him for a while.”
– Napoleon Hill
Which is precisely what our government has been doing for the last four years – and even further back: They have been running things like we, the people, just did not matter. Even as far back as 2008 – we had Obama, saying of Pennsylvania’s small-town voters who were losing their jobs at the time: “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
So, we were all labelled, ‘Bitter Clingers.”
Then, in 2016, it was Hillary Clinton’s turn. It was at a fundraiser in NewYork City, when she unleashed with this: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.
Right?” Clinton said. “The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”
So, then we were a “Basket of Deplorables,” which, of course, brings us up to the recent election cycle and the remarks that are all still painfully fresh in our minds: Kamala Harris, calling Trump a ‘Nazi.’
Or Joe Biden calling Trump supporters, ‘Garbage.’
Imagine – as Napoleon Hill would have it – that you talked to your customers that way, if you ran a business!
Well, that’s exactly the way officials in government have been talking of the electorate for many years now.
It’s not right.
It’s not even decent.
Because Americans just did not want the present regime to go after three things: #1-Our country-the flood of illegals pouring into our land, taking away our jobs or money, and bring drugs and criminality to our shores.
#2-Our way of life. Costs rising so high and fast that it is taking away our societal mobility – that is, our ability to rise in society without the crushing cost-of-living debts killing the American Dream.
#3-Our children-with pushing surgeries and chemical castration upon innocents, destroying their lives and their futures, as well as trans-men taking what rightfully belongs to women.
In the end, they got the message with the electoral and popular vote breaking all records in giving voice to our objections to that path toward destruction.
In a rare moment of clarity, even far-left comedian – Bill Maher – saw the light. In a recent skit, he gave voice to our grievances against these violations of our trust.
“He went after his most recent favorite target, the far left, by noting ‘Kamala is still polling very well with illegal immigrant inmates who want sex change operations.’
“‘This election has always been about how this country’s had enough of the anti-common sense, woke bulls. Resoundingly,’ he added.”
Amen, brother. Amen.
Robert L. Hall is a resident of Marion and has a Bachelor’s Degree in music from the University of Memphis and a Master’s Degree from Florida State University. He is the pianist for Avondale Baptist Church.
– Wallace Stegner
Robert L. Hall
The Wordaholic
