Out of the devastation of hurricanes Helene and Milton, two roads diverge in a sodden wood. One road sees only what is urgent, the immediate needs for rescue and recovery. The other road, less traveled by, also looks farther for what is important. The road we choose in the Nov. 5 election will make all the difference. Listen to weatherman John Morales speak of his decision to do more than report the weather. Have a look.
Nothing is more important than a healthy planet. Nothing. When a candidate for high office calls climate change a hoax, move on. Do the same with “down-ballot” candidates and political parties that tap dance around the question. This election is about reality.
Presidents, senators, justices, and generals have spoken lines they attribute to Alexis de Tocqueville during his visit to America in 1831. “America is great because she is good, and if America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” Facing the sin of slavery, James Russell Lowell wrote the poem that became the lyric of a hymn on which I was a raised. “Once to every man and nation, in the strife of truth with falsehood, comes the moment to decide….” This is a moment like that.
Looking for a Foothold
In time, God help us, the divisions among the American electorate will be healed. Yet, before there is healing, is a common weariness that crosses all lines of difference. Nobel Laureate Albert Camus described our situation when he wrote under the dark cloud that swept over the world in the 1930 and ’40s. Camus’s insight into the experience provides insight into how the absence of any foothold produced suffering in a period similar to ours
“The modern mind is in complete disarray,” wrote Camus. “Knowledge has stretched itself to the point where neither the world nor our intelligence can find a foothold. It is a fact that we are suffering from nihilism.”
The Sum of Your Choices
“Life is the sum of your choices.”
Albert Camus
The sum of our choices in this election will be who we are, and will determine what America will become. Votes for candidates and parties that substitute greatness for goodness, while avoiding or denying climate change, are votes against the future.
Vote like life your life, your children’s and grandchildren’s depend on it, because it does.
Gordon C. Stewart, public theologian, author of Be Still! Departure from Collective Madness (2017, Wipf and Stock), Brooklyn Park, MN, October 10, 2024.
Views from the Edge 
Your post is so important. While those of us who are of a certain age may not see the final catastrophic impact, it’s ours to weep for what we have done and what we continue in many ways to deny. But the burden on our children and their families is horrific, as Dr. Morales tells us through his own tears. We have to do more than pray or speak of our horror and fear; but what? Is it too late? Sleep escapes me nightly and when I do sleep, it is a troubled miasma, stinking of anxiety and guilt. Thank you for a clear call to awareness. Keep writing, please.
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Thanks for the wise thoughts. Is it too late? It may be, we have to live as though it’s not over til it’s over and do what little we can to repair a broken world. I remember visiting with an Austrian couple in Vienna years ago. In their view, everybody knew enough to know it had to be stopped; they kept quiet. They didn’t speak of the reign of terror under which they lived. Why? Because they didn’t feel safe? Because they were cowards? Because they thought nothing they might do or say would make any difference? Because they felt so beaten up in WWI that they looked the other way, plugged their ears, and shut their mouths? Because they were Communists, Gypsies, or Jews, fearing for their lives? Yes. All of that and more.
Whatever the outcome of November 5, nobody wins. The work shifts from shouting to listening; from blaming to going deeper into the only antidote to fear. “Perfect love casts out fear.” “Faint not, nor fear,” wrote Bonhoeffer in his last letter to his best friend and fellow disciple, “but go out to the storm and the action…. May God in his mercy lead us through these times; but above all, may he lead us to himself.”
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Gordon, My dear friend of 60 years. The period we live now has many echos to the time of our birth and youth. Then and now a leader claimed the problems were because of THEM. If we could only eradicate THEM.
we now have the biggest threat to our democracy …. Non-college educated white males. We live again in a post-truth culture.
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Jim, I’ve been disturbed before, but not this much.What would Eric Fromm or Elie Wiesel say? Never have I been as appalled as I am now. Never have I been more anxious about an election. Never before have I wanted to pull the blanket over my head, throw a fist (or a shoe, maybe?) at the television screen, been so distraught and withdrawn that I can’t write, knowing that so many cannot see, or, do know and see the present danger, but have chosen to be seduced into the narcissistic, pathological cobweb woven out of “alternative facts.” I take some comfort in long-lasting friendships like ours. Thanks for sticking by Views from the Edge. Grace and Peace.
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