320 Years of History
Gold Member
I'm not a political operative, candidate or would be candidate so the lessons learned from any election cycle that are apparent to me are rather high level. That said, this election cycle has shown me that to undertake a run for elected office, one really cannot merely be a "typical" citizen/observer and expect to be an effective/winning candidate. I say "typical" because it's my view that most Americans these days (maybe never, but I've not lived forever to have a way to know that) just aren't composed of high enough personal integrity, driven by deeply enough and thought through personal systems of principle, broadly well informed enough, and possessed of genuine enough subject matter impartiality to be able to express their ideas such that they may legitimately expect to garner the support of their intended electorate, particularly at the national level, and especially at the Presidential level.
That's really a shame for it means that a lot of the folks who probably could be quite good at running the U.S. will never endeavor to do so, in large measure because they just haven't the tolerance to put up with the political BS that accompanies elected office. Who's fault is that? Well, it's no single person's fault. It's our collective fault. We, the voters, let things evolve to where they are. We have allowed politics to get to the point where what matters most is the metrics and the optics. But make no mistake...there is individual blame as well. That we don't far more often raise inherently high principled kids, that we don't raise kids who have irreproachable morals/ethics, is the thing for which many of us are to blame individually. We wouldn't have the collective problem were we to far more often individually not make those mistakes.
The individual blame that rolls up to a collective travesty isn't limited to how we begin things. It exists in how we do things once we are well commenced on life's path. For example, we collectively assert we want elected officials who are responsive to the people's needs, yet individually, we keep sending the same folks back to Washington. How on Earth can one expect to realize different results when one keeps sending the same person(s) back to Washington? It's pure folly, insanity really, to expect different results from doing the same thing.
So, with that introduction, I ask, what non-partisan lessons have you learned from this election cycle?
That's really a shame for it means that a lot of the folks who probably could be quite good at running the U.S. will never endeavor to do so, in large measure because they just haven't the tolerance to put up with the political BS that accompanies elected office. Who's fault is that? Well, it's no single person's fault. It's our collective fault. We, the voters, let things evolve to where they are. We have allowed politics to get to the point where what matters most is the metrics and the optics. But make no mistake...there is individual blame as well. That we don't far more often raise inherently high principled kids, that we don't raise kids who have irreproachable morals/ethics, is the thing for which many of us are to blame individually. We wouldn't have the collective problem were we to far more often individually not make those mistakes.
The individual blame that rolls up to a collective travesty isn't limited to how we begin things. It exists in how we do things once we are well commenced on life's path. For example, we collectively assert we want elected officials who are responsive to the people's needs, yet individually, we keep sending the same folks back to Washington. How on Earth can one expect to realize different results when one keeps sending the same person(s) back to Washington? It's pure folly, insanity really, to expect different results from doing the same thing.
So, with that introduction, I ask, what non-partisan lessons have you learned from this election cycle?
