We’re the ones who must make America great, not the candidates
By Alonzo Weston
Halloween came early this year with the first presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
It’s Halloween scary because of our two choices: a narcissistic dictator and wanna-be felon and a platitude-speaking liberal.
That the debate took place a day before the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is a sign our country is about to change drastically after the November election, whoever gets elected.
What will be different is the dissension in our country.
After 9/11, we all became Americans, not liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. We banded together against a common foe. Some 20 years later, that foe has become each other.
Our country hasn’t been this split since the Civil War.
It befuddles me how we could be forward-seeking enough in 2008 to elect a Black president in Barack Obama then eight years later choose a country-dividing despot in Donald Trump.
If Obama had done all that Trump has he would probably have been figuratively or literally lynched by the public. Bill Clinton had one indiscretion we know of and ministers were saying he would burn in hell. What Dante’s circle of hell would Trump burn in?
Make America Great Again was the chant from the right when no one could recall when we were actually great. We’ve always had poverty, prejudice and wars.
No one wants to say we were becoming great in the 1960s with President Lyndon Johnson’s social service and equal rights programs. Now it seems we disdain the poor and blame them and the immigrants for all of our problems.
The Statute of Liberty weeps in the harbor as we turn our backs on the most needy.
The immigrants, not all rapists and criminals as some would have us believe, are not taking our jobs. These people are doing the menial hard work we don’t want to do. They work our orchards, fields and packing houses, jobs many Americans snub their noses at.
And no one wants an abortion like no one wants war. It’s a right for a woman to choose what to do with her body after a rape or incest. Would you want to raise your uncle or rapist’s child? Yes, you can put the child up for adoption but many people would rather adopt babies from overseas than here in our country.
We can live up to our claim of greatness by first coming together as a nation and solving our problems together. We don’t get there by pointing fingers and spewing hate-filled rhetoric.
Our country is at stake whoever wins the presidency. Our country is us, the people, and it’s up to us to make it great. We’ve come close but we’re not there yet.
