Tuesday, July 7, 2020

consensus, as a country?



one, from our many?


Quakers strive for consensus,

to make a decision that all are comfortable with,

and that’s way harder than voting,

just over a half is a step in the right direction,

but then just under half can feel their ideas and selves are denied,


in the United States a few tens of thousands of votes

tipped the Electoral College into electing Donald Trump,

though the popular vote more substantially favored Hilary Clinton,

and our country is fractured,


if current pols are to be believed,

about 40% of the electorate still want Trump to be president,

despite how disastrous he has been

in the struggle to transcend the tribal

and build a blessed community out of all of us,


it is important to deny the emperor with no clothes

even more years to splinter us and to splinter hope even more,


yet somehow we need to find a way

to welcome those who have followed him

back into a union composed of many,

to somehow do better than Reconstruction did,

for his supporters to know 

they are a valued part of a larger whole,

despite the roiling hate that drives us to fear.



by Henry H. Walker
July 5, ‘20

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