King Fisher

Something from the tackle box:

       Samuel told the people who were asking for a king what the Lord had said: -

       He will force your sons to join his army…. Still others will have to farm the king’s land and harvest his crops, or make weapons and parts for his chariots.  Your daughters will have to make perfume or do his cooking and baking.

       The king will take your best fields, as well as your vineyards, and olive orchards and give them to his officials.  He will also take a tenth of your grain and grapes and give it to his officers and officials.

       The king will take your servants and your best young men and your donkeys and make them do his work.  He will take a tenth of your sheep and goats.  You will become the king’s slaves, and you will cry out for the Lord to save you from the king you wanted.  But the Lord won’t answer your prayers.

       The people would not listen to Samuel.  “No!” they said.  “We want to be like other nations.  We want a king to rule us and lead us in battle.”  (from 1Samuel:10-20 CEV)

 I really wish that we had a law in our great nation, mandating that everyone who is eligible to vote HAD to vote.  I also wish that it was mandated by law that a - ‘none of the above’ - box be printed on each and every ballot, so that voters could check it off if they thought that everyone running for the office wasn’t worth wasting any bait on.  And then, if ‘none of the above’ got the most votes, all of the parties would have to put forward a whole new slate of candidates, with no repeats from the ones they offered the first time around.  It might take a few months to do it, but I’d be willing to wait.  

For as far back as I can remember into my childhood school days, and I’m sixty years old now, I’ve always believed in that old saying that we’ve all heard over and over again, all our lives, about our American form of democracy.  You all know it, in fact I’ve heard some of you repeat it, I’ve repeated it myself in years past.  We say:  “Our system may not be perfect – but it’s still the best system in the world!”  

Well, I’m able to tell you today, officially, that I no longer believe that statement to be the truth, - at all!  If our system can’t do any better than it’s done this year then there ARE better systems.  There has to be a system, one that still leaves us with a Democracy, that can give us better options for leadership than the mess we’ve created in this election cycle.  (I myself am becoming a bigger fan of multiparty Parliamentary models of Democratic representation all the time, but that’s just a personal opinion.)

But, regardless of the fact that I’d really rather cut bait than fish in this year's election, I will be up bright and early on Tuesday morning to cast my vote!  And if you haven’t already done so with an early ballot, then you should too!  It is your patriotic duty to vote even if you have to hold your nose while you’re doing it and then go home and take a shower before going to the local diner to have breakfast and listen to all the political B.S. getting spewed out at the old-duffer’s table.   

So I want to see you there with me at the polls, and then later on at breakfast down at the C&R. Even if you’re voting for the other ridiculous lump than the one that I’m voting for, you still NEED to VOTE.  After all, if we’ve all really decided that we’re actually going shoot holes in the bottom of our rowboat because we want the people sitting in the other end of it to jump out – then it will work best if we ALL take a turn pulling the trigger.