I'm Not the One

With well over seven decades in the rearview mirror, I’m not the one who should be most fearful of what lies ahead for our country. Those who will have to live in the aftermath of the potential wreckage for most of their lives are the ones who should be most concerned. They should tremble with the prospect of crossing the bridge ahead. The water is rising, the bridge is in poor repair, and we are driving much too fast.\

The youth of our country, perhaps the least likely voting bloc, will end up under either a damaged democracy that is still serviceable or looking up from the bottom of a ravine lamenting how it all might have been salvaged if only they (and we) had acted. In November 2024, our nation crosses that bridge and enters a bizarre “land of shadow and substance, of things and ideas.” For those too young to remember that journey reference, it involved entering, The Twilight Zone.

For much of the 1960s, I was too young to vote but I was eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam. Many of the youth of that period protested the war. I doubt many people my age could have told you why we were fighting and I would also guess that many adults shared our ignorance. Certainly, none of us wanted to die for an undisclosed cause under the guise of patriotic duty.

Today on college campuses there are protests about war once again. I won’t get into the pros and cons behind these current efforts only that perhaps these students should also be aware of what is happening in their homeland. While we need to be mindful of the tragedies unfolding in Gaza and Ukraine, we have a disaster in the making here in America that could end up being far worse.

I would hope that our eligible youth would look up from their cellphones long enough to find time to vote this November. They need to do their due diligence and make an informed decision. The following is a quote from Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, “Being like everybody is the same as being nobody. There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.”

We all need to view this presidential election as a fork in the road where we all need to decide which path our nation will take. What we do in November will decide our future for decades to come. We can all identify the problems even if we have different ideas regarding solutions and priorities. There are no simple solutions or fixes and no one person has all the answers. We need to hear about planned policy, not political rhetoric and senseless blather.

This should not be about who you would like to have a beer with. But, if that were your criteria, you should remember that Trump doesn’t drink and never picks up the tab. We each need to decide what type of person we want to represent us.

Postscript: While researching this post I ran across the May 1, 1964, episode of The Twilight Zone titled "The Encounter.” It had been first broadcast on that date but was withheld from syndication due to its racial overtones. The American market for this one episode was closed in the US until 2004. It holds the distinction of being the only episode ever so pulled. That episode involved a former US soldier who meets a young Japanese American looking for work. The job involves cleaning an attic. A war relic, a Japanese katana (Samurai) sword is central to the plot. It had been taken from a dead Japanese soldier by the homeowner (Neville Brand). Brand’s character had killed that soldier during WWII 20 years previous. The young Japanese American was played by George Takei.

The closing narration for this episode is, “Two men in an attic, locked in mortal embrace. Their common bond, and their common enemy: guilt. A disease all too prevalent amongst men both in and out of The Twilight Zone.” [the accompanying graphic holds a slightly modified version of one of the intros for that show.]