Americans are preparing to vote in the midterm elections and again we hear the familiar cliché, “The next election is the most significant one in our lifetime.”
But the infighting between the Democrats and the Republicans, the donkeys and the elephants have left many Americans “dog tired.” Unfortunately, U.S. elections have become a call to pick a side, to get ready to fight again because “the next election is the most significant one.”
It has been an ongoing observation for decades and continues with regular “dudes” who said, “I’m done” to Pope Francis who addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress in 2015 and told them to stop bickering and get to work.
Why don’t our government leaders see that this doesn’t work for the American people?
In 2020, the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of Americans had stopped talking about politics altogether, and I don’t think that number has changed. I’m trying to keep up with the issues, but what are they fighting about now?
Besides, with political violence on the rise, I’m afraid that I don’t want to hear anything else from a politician. Some speeches are not safe for all Americans or government buildings.
More “tribal” and less communal, arguments are presented as, “Take my side or I’m taking the U.S. Capitol Building with me.” Left- or right-wing, it’s either/or but there are many who are tired of the back and forth, the divisive speech that comes between everything that America hopes to stand for.
Not wanting to pick a side or tired of having to choose between them, many Americans have decided to sit these conversations out. Tired of being ticked off, many people don’t want to hear another word about politics. The Desert Sun reported, “Americans are getting sick of both political parties.”
Tired of candidates and speeches, political rallies and pleas for support. Tired of the divide. Tired of “both sides.” Tired of being lied to, tired of catching and keeping track of lies. Tired of hearing about, talking about, arguing about politics. Just plain tired.
I, too, am tired, and many of us have a list of things we are tired of — with divisive politics being at the top, along with the laundry that keeps mysteriously piling up. “Didn’t I just wash this? Didn’t we already watch this episode of us versus them?”
I am missing the days when things were not so red and blue. How I wish these colors would run together. I know that it is not a good look. However, let us do whatever it takes to get back to some semblance of normalcy. Now, there’s a word I would like to hear more of.
Instead, our leaders have hyper-politicized words like virus, mask, vote, ballot, count and recount. And then persons wonder why we cannot come together.
Call it what it is and then call it off. Shut off the political machinery and give American citizens a break. We are tired.
Tired of the news cycle and the cyclical conversations with no expressed desire to come to an understanding, a consensus, an agreement to at least “agree to disagree.” Heels dug in while singing, “This land is my land.” But this attitude is tired.
The siege of the U.S. Capitol Building by American citizens at the direction of then President of the United States Donald Trump has taken nearly everything out of me.
Exhausted and depleted, a break or a time out is needed but of course, after you vote because “the next election is the most significant one…”
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Director of The Raceless Gospel Initiative, an associate editor, host of the Good Faith Media podcast, “The Raceless Gospel” and author of Take Me to the Water: The Raceless Gospel as Baptismal Pedagogy for a Desegregated Church.
