Sep 23, 2018 4 min read

The presidential election of 2016 was determined by a very thin margin. Based upon the number of votes cast, our nation was fairly evenly split. Unfortunately, the divisions which resulted have been nothing short of catastrophic for our country, and our unity and identity as Americans. Lifelong friends, even members of the same family, have stopped talking to one another, and the implications surrounding the Robert Mueller investigation have turned it into a political football. Who has not noticed the ongoing anger and outrage almost two years after this latest election?

We have a decision to make. We can continue to fight, and hate one another, or we can accept that politics is like religion, and that different people make different choices based on belief in a candidate. So how can any of us hate one another for voting one way or the other? Who among us would condemn fellow Americans who choose to be Baptist, Catholic, Muslim or Mormon, or bicker with them about their faith? We should act the same say with politics. None of the politicians, and none of us, are perfect people who have all the answers to the world’s problems.

Voting for a politician is comparable to an act of faith. People vote in the hope they are choosing the better candidate or person. And just as some choose not to vote, some choose not to be religious, because they see religion as something that divides, rather than unites. But that’s not what our faiths, or politics, are supposed to be about. We the people are the nation. Not the president. Not the Supreme Court. Not Anderson Cooper. Not Bill O’Reilly. We are. But if we are not united, then our nation cannot stand. Or wasn’t one Civil War enough to learn that lesson?

The only difference is how the parties support one group of wealthy interests over another group of wealthy interests with government regulations. Often, they only need us for our vote. That’s why they always throw us little “bones of contention,” so that they can divide us over issues like abortion, or gay marriage, or gun rights, while they make millions and billions through political maneuvering over larger (and much more lucrative) issues. The laws on trade, or health care, or banking regulation, are always made with the wealthy’s best financial interests at heart. Not ours.

Don’t believe me? Who allowed banks to bundle variable-rate mortgages into financial instruments that destroyed the middle class? Congress. Who bailed out the banks with taxpayer money, and then allowed those same banks to foreclose on taxpayers’ homes? Congress. Who sent our jobs to communist countries while supporting brutal dictators in Latin America, whose people now run our border in desperation? Congress. People we elected! If you have such ardent faith in politicians to save the nation, how has your faith in those representatives been rewarded?

Or do you really believe we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and bribing officials in Pakistan, or overthrowing governments in Egypt and Libya, for the sake of “freedom?” Just look at where your latest package of socks, underwear, or T-shirts were made. Congress spends our soldiers’ lives and your taxes in those places because that’s where the mega-rich and their corporations are getting the best deals on light sweet crude, sweated labor, and gas pipelines. If nothing I have said in this column has convinced you of the truth of my words, just ask yourself two questions:

Would your life now be materially or financially better in any way if Marco Rubio or Hillary Clinton had been elected president? Would anything in your life honestly change for the better tomorrow?!

My guess is probably not. Serve God. Serve humanity. Serve the person right in front of you. Leave wallowing in anger and hatred. The first thing is to stop believing in political idols. If you want to change the world, do what is in your power to change it – today.

Turn off the boob-tube, turn off FOX and CNN, and spend time in fellowship with your family and friends instead. You’ll soon see that the sky is not falling, and that most of the things those people on TV say you should be worried and angry about will never come to pass. Jesus Christ was tempted in the wilderness with offers of self-gratification, of wealth and power, and finally the temptation to despair. We are being tempted today in a political wilderness; tempted to focus on our own gratification, or for control and power over others, and that failing, tempted to despair.

Joseph M. Mazgaj is a substitute teacher from Rogersville and a former lay minister at Wind Ridge Christian Church.