Choices

Americans have vital choices to make. Failure to make choices before voting is not an option. Some people are trying to limit your access to the poll and invalidate your ballot. For example, Texas’s new state law permitted nearly 270,000 ballots destroyed. We need to redouble efforts to help everyone to vote. If many of us fail to vote, then by default we may push our society towards living in a right-wing political cultist environment. There we will have to accept big lies and endure a country fraught with tension, fear, and violence. Conversely, the more massive the voter turnout, the more likely our choice will lead to a life where we can live safely and securely. However, before making critical choices let us asses the dangers of our global and national status. Each impacts the other.

For decades, America has enjoyed the status of being the “Leader of the Free World.” However, in the recent past numerous foreign leaders have described our foreign policy activities as eccentric, erratic, and a “diplomatic joke.” Given the nuclear capability combined with the leadership instability of nations like Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia, this perception of our international leadership as being weak or directionless is critically dangerous.

Vladimir Putin’s attack on the Ukraine and our presidential response has reestablished the global integrity and cooperative leadership of the United States. For example, Biden and his team facilitated the overnight creation of an active an effective cadre of NATO and other international political leaders. Their balanced levy and enforcements of sanctions has crippled Russia’s economy and blunted Putin’s invasion on the Ukraine. The “war,” earlier touted by Putin as only a heightened “training,” is going badly for Russia. Although the final outcome may seem to be inevitable, Putin is feeling pressure from the drawn-out time span of his “attack.”

Yet Putin is determined to rebuild the Russian Empire to the level it was before the Cold War break up. In 2005 during a speech he stated, “The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century was the breaking up of the Soviet Union.” His decision to attack the Ukraine has been in cement for years. The Ukraine is only the first invasion, because he wants to retake all the area of central Europe. In his dream, all of those small countries “belong to the Russian Empire.”

The former American ambassador to the Ukraine described Putin as a “bully who becomes mean when he does not get his way.” An ambitious thwarted bully’s territorial desires can become a world-wide cancer. He also holds one finger on the trigger of a nuclear weapon.

Living on the edge of these global threats should awaken and compel us to work towards getting our own military, economic, and political wall clocks ticking smoothly.

This is the worst time for the breakup of Republican Party. America needs a viable and functioning Republican Party. We do not need far right-wing extremists who ignore the Constitution as they endorse and practice violence to achieve their goals. The party suffers when far right-wing congressmen and top national leaders make outlandish, untrue, and unwise statements such as: a senator reporting California forest fires were caused by Jews sending lasers from outer space, or when top party leaders describe how “smart” and “savvy” Putin is and asking him for help to dig up political smut about the Biden family.

The party has been hurt to the core by the “big lie” about the 2020 election. The subsequent events that lead up to the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection attempt have spawned a two-year controversy. The most demoralizing aspect of the party is the dominance of the top-down culture. This leads to a revengeful punishment oriented targeting of member’s personal and political lives unless the top directions. It severely reduces the party’s flexibility.

The Democratic Party also has its too-long list of problems. They would be better to create smaller units of legislation rather than only grandiose plans. A list would be long for both parties.

Remember, a bad Democrat, such as an ex-governor with one-too-many young girl friends, is just as bad as a bad Republican senator who supports Putin’s Ukraine attack because he is trying to rid the country from its Nazi element. Neither is a good vote choice.

The issue is not their parties. We have many excellent incumbents and new candidates in both major political parties. Their intelligence, skills, integrity, and honesty are major national assets. Choosing to vote for people like these will enable us to enhance our constitutional democracy and our global leadership status.

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Pat Tierney of Havre is a 50-plus year retired educator including serving as a professor at Stone Child College and as a professor and dean at Northern Montana College, now Montana State University-Northern.