The condition of the electorate

Dear Editor,
Here it is Saturday before election day Tuesday. America is getting ready to crown a king for the first time in our history, and what are we doing as a people to prepare for that jarring possibility?
We are friending and unfriending on social media. We are going deeper and deeper into debt doing online shopping. We are watching college football pre-game shows on TV and placing bets on pro football games. We are planning our wardrobe for church services.
We have lost our heads and hearts and have no real consciousness about the crossroads we are at as a nation.
But how could we have? We didn’t pay attention in school. We can’t stick with a single employer for longer than a couple years, or a couple months. We move from one temporary residence to another. We have never opened a newspaper or gone to a public meeting to discuss issues. We don’t keep our promises to anybody—our spouses, our children, our employers, our friends.
We have so many implacable addictions we don’t have enough fingers and toes to count them out. Science is the enemy. We believe anything that a corporation or a celebrity tells us to think or do.
We are not worthy of democracy any longer. We dishonor our parents, grandparents, and everybody else’s ancestors with our juvenile notions about life, work, politics, and social life.
When will we ever wake up?

Kimball Shinkoskey

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