A friend posted this on my wall yesterday morning, the day after the election.

I wishI had some soothing balm to apply to her soul. She is a compassionate conservative, a lovely young woman, in a liberal bastion of Northern California and I think things got pretty nasty in her neck of the woods.

I’ve sat with her request for 24 hours and I still don’t have much, but like The Beatles offered in Can’t Buy Me Love, “What I’ve got, I’ll give to you.”

“I’m sorry you have been feeling so much pressure. I am sorry your blue friends and neighbors aren’t being kindly, compassionate, good winners. I am sorry if your red family and friends are being poor sports. For the most part, I’ve been able to avoid it down here. I make it a pretty hard and fast rule that I don’t talk politics with anyone I might want to like the next day – that goes for family as well.

People who feel strongly about their party affiliations make me extremely uncomfortable. They have ever since I was about 16 years old and figured out that I didn’t, in fact, have all the answers to the world’s problems. It seems to me that the party ideologues still haven’t figured that out yet. I think people who post rabid support for one party, or one candidate are fooling themselves. I try to never get caught up in politics, because it is almost always synonymous with hypocrisy.

• No matter who gets elected, the first ones taken care of are the biggest financial backers.  Every party looks out for their own.

• The candidates promise the moon and the stars, with no hope of delivering anything resembling those celestial bodies. If we are lucky, the average citizens get covered in the dust.
• Everyone talks about the need for bipartisanship, but no one wants to play.

• People are so wrapped up in their own ideologies that they can’t see what is good, right, or even reasonable in the other point of view.

• To win, transparency and honesty are impossible for the candidates to uphold and therefore, they are impossible for me to know, or trust.

I recognize in myself all these pitfalls. I know I am capable of getting drawn into these same behaviors and emotions, which is why I don’t engage in politics with anyone, ever, if I can help it. I try to take a wider view (for which my father will call me a Pollyanna).

I believe that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are both good, decent men. They love God (as they know him); they love their country and they love their families. In their own way, they have served those ideals faithfully throughout their lives, along with those in need in our country and the world beyond. They might define “need” differently, but they looked to something larger than themselves upon which to base their lives and their work. Their attempts have earned my respect and though I despise the political rhetoric they both spewed during the election season when pandering to their party’s core, they have not quite lost it.

I do not know where America will end up. I know it cannot go back to the time where the WASPs ruled and everyone else fell to the back of the line. It breaks my heart to think that we might go the direction of European socialism, and the financial dependency and apathy that goes with it. I hope we Americans can find a way to reinvent our nation, and ourselves like we did over 200 years ago. Ultimately, I know that screaming, shouting and denigrating our political opponents will bring about NOTHING good. I can only vote with my conscience and do my best to live out the values that I profess to believe in: faith, hope and Love.”