Old Preacher's Story, Revised

 A mother knocks on her son's door, then slowly enters.  "It's time to get up!  You've got to get to work."  

"I'm so tired!  I was up half the night watching cable news and talking to all my friends on the Twitter."  

"That doesn't matter.  You have to get up, the morning is half over."

"Well, if I have to get up, can I at least go play golf today?"  

"No!  You have to get to work.  Lots of people are counting on you."

"But mom!  I hate those people.  And half of them hate me.  They talk about how bad I am at my job and how I'm a really terrible person."

"Get out there and prove them wrong then.  Do what's right.  Think about other people besides yourself for once."

"What about what I want?  That's the only thing that really matters!"

"Donald, you are the Presdient of the United States.  Get up, and don't make me come in here again."  

And...scene!

The Election

Some thoughts that really, really need to get out of my head so I can be productive today. 

-As of this writing, at 7:17am the morning after the election, it's still too close to call.  In an election where the worst president of my lifetime is running for re-election, it should have been a slam-dunk for the Democrats.  They ran an elder statesman of the party, a decent man who for a Democrat was rather moderate.  They didn't make a bunch of huge missteps, which is susprising because Joe Biden may be about two years from a dementia diagnosis.  But nope, likely they are going to blow it.  In an election in which they had a strong opportunity and a huge war chest of money to overtake the Senate, they blew it there, too.  Stuff like this is only one of the reasons why I can never be a Democrat.  The Republicans may have become morally repugnant, but at least they know what they are doing in order to get power.  The Democrats?  The only difference between them and the play-acting of the Libertarians is that they have been around awhile and once did some Things.  Maybe it's time to put them out of their misery.  The Whigs used to be a major thing in this country, and within a decade they were replaced by the Republicans.  It's time to establish a viable new centrist party.  

-Once again a Democrat is going to win the popular vote (though not by nearly as much as projected) but probably will lose the electoral college.  It's once again going to come down to a few votes in a few states.  This system stinks.  

-As heartbreaking as this week has been, it's time for Christians to stand up and truly live as citizens of the Kingdom of God.  This is an opportunity for us.  The major parties surely won't follow godliness, and so the church needs to stand for righteousness and justice and mercy and grace.  I'm becoming enough of a cynic of mainstream 'American Christianity' to think that this is not going to happen, but we need to try.  The next four years, if Trump ends up winning, are going to make 2020 look like paradise in comparison.  Who is to stand up and do what's right?  

EDIT 11/9/20 2:26pm.  So Joe Biden ended up winning the election, thankfully.  But it should never have been this close. The Democrats still have massive problems, and even though Trump will eventually be gone (willingly or not), they have a long way to go to ever earn my trust.