We live in weird times, to say the least. Our current president is using a real issue in the black lives matter/police brutality struggle to further an anti gun platform that contradicts the manifestation of the founding principles of this country.
Meanwhile our president nominees on both sides of the aisle offer a caricature of what a president could be both to us domestically and to the world at large. We're stuck as a country between the rock of a presumptive felon and a hard place of a bigoted narcissist.
What are we to do? Do we cast our lot with the one who offers a better diplomatic façade (also, hello Benghazi) or do we trust in a candidate who feeds on American unrest with a show of devil-may-care impetuousness. Either way poses a moral issue, no matter what you try to convince yourself with the lesser of two evils approach.
I was at a little cafe in Austin a week back playing chess with a fellow from work. After a couple of games he had somewhere else to be, and I invited a gentleman who had been standing by to play.
He sat with me outside in the beating sun, we set up the board, and we began to play. As we made our opening moves, I asked how long he'd been playing chess.
"Oh, I've been playing since I was twelve, so I guess that's been about sixty years," he replied. "I guess I'm in trouble, then," I responded with a pained look down at the move he had just made.
John beat me handily in both games, but I learned much more in an hour playing there than all the times I've won combined. I guess what they say about learning more when you lose than when you win holds water.
Either way this election goes, the American people lose. As in any battle, whether it is martial, intellectual, or physical, the result is not told simply by who wins or loses. There's always another battle.
What will the American people learn after this battle is over, after the nominated president's term is over?
After my first loss to John, knowing myself to be outmatched, I used the second game to ask questions in certain situations. He was kind enough to make it more of a learning game, and so we analyzed as we went along. One thing I'll always remember him saying:
"Solve the problem."
This seems like obvious advice, except that in chess half the battle is against yourself. If you get caught up in the endless intricacies of your strategy, you might just miss the problem; if you're blind to the problem there is almost no chance you will accidentally move into a solution.
The country is full of unrest, but is focused on individual issues that are symptoms of real problems. Any history text worth its salt delves into ideological wars waged in the minds of the people to explain resulting world-changing events.
Everyone knows the adage "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." Just as important is "Those who don't know the problem are doomed to cause more.
Solve the problem, America.
~Worley
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