A Survival Guide for This Meshuga Campaign Season

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

Super Tuesday closed the competition of the primaries. The remaining primaries are formalities to accumulate the required number of delegates. The candidates, Democrat and Republican, are set for the run for the White House.

During the next nine months, each will vie for our vote, demonstrating their confidence, their integrity, and their vision for America. Truth will be stretched, facts distorted, and their accomplishments will have been the salvation of America. Millions will be spent on media ads, broadcast – TV & radio, print media and podcast. There will be exaggerations, half-truths, outright lies, and 30-second sound bites that border on the ridiculous.

It is our hope that we survive the deluge of tarradiddle with our sanity intact. It will require strategic intentionality. I offer this guide for our survival.

We must not be naïve. This is not normal politics, not a normal election cycle, not normal campaign rhetoric and discourse. The ship of democracy is in a tempestuous storm; boisterous waves of extremist ideas of what America should be threatens to break the ship apart.

I’m reminded of the prophet Jonah. He was determined to do things his way. He defied the God of Israel, boarded a ship and headed in a direction that God had not intended. The ship ran into a terrible storm and was tossed about on the sea. The captain of the ship perceived that the storm was from the Higher Being. It was a time when every man had their own god. He charged every man to call on their god. It was his hope that the Higher Being would intercede and calm the storm. It didn’t matter to the captain whose god answered, just calm this storm. The point is that in times of trouble everyone should pray.

We are a multiethnic, multi-culture, multifaith nation. We don’t all worship the same Deity. We must respect that reality. Prayer is the most essential thing we can use to steady the ship.

I begin with the spiritual because everyone believes that there is someone, or something greater than ourselves who chastens and corrects, who guides and protects. Therefore, keep your Holy Scriptures close. Open them, study them, peruse them to keep yourselves anchored to some truth. In this season, truth will be obscure and indistinguishable; lies have become so normal that truth is compromised, and truth and facts are meaningless. Your Holy Scriptures will help you to test the spirits and know what is true.

It will also become necessary to be selective in what we listen to, and selective in what we watch on television. Radio and television networks will run soundbite ads and edited video clips of the candidates; ad nauseum. They are designed to present the opposing candidates at their worst. If possible, do not expose your mind to these distortions.

Read more, research for yourself; study the candidates, their history on the issues, their character, examine their position statements when they were not window dressing and pandering to a political base. This will reveal their true character.

We must not be gullible electorates. There should be discernment rooted in our spiritual foundation. Discernment, however, can be deficient; it is often filtered through our beliefs system and values learned through our circumstances – often reactive – or were inherent in our culture.

Cultivate the habit of fact checking. The internet and social media are not good sources of information. Political operatives use these platforms for propaganda, misinformation, misdirection and manipulation.

There are credible fact checking websites. Some news media have incorporated fact checking into their reporting. They bear a responsibility to accurately report the facts. A Google search for fact checking sites will pull up credible resources.

We may be tempted to consider this hyperbole. We are only voting for a qualified person to run our country. Both are men beyond the “threescore and ten” of Psalm 90, record setting ages; both will draw wisdom from divergent experiences. Both are men of reasonable intelligence, depending on the metrics used to measure intelligence. But the soul of the nation rests on every ballot cast.

The politics of the nation are shifting into a maniacal mode. It will become distressful to some rational thinking Americans. There will be mental and physiological reactions. But if we are wise, thoughtful and resilient, we will get through this. We always have. This is America. That being said, it will be good to keep Ole Glory near to remind us that this is America. Keep some antiacids in the medicine cabinet, some Pepto-Bismal, and the phone number of a therapist on speed-dial.