Sentient Balance

A contest has been planned, projected, played, and completed. My side won, but you’d think that was not the case.

While the far, and extreme, reaches of the country wrestles with consternation and loss of place, or unexpected gain of place, each of the extremists wonders at the antics of their envisioned enemies as if they had gone mad. Or worse, gone angry and determined. 

I did not sit at the extremes of the side that won. Neither, actually, did any of my children. Though some entries in the contest might have assuaged us all, none of them were up to the mark against either eventual winner. The winners cheated by garnering more votes in the areas that counted in the contest. The eventual winner fought the contest with better tactics, though “better” among either of the two fits within a very low bar of civility.

The contest ended just over three months ago. The confetti and flying mud, however, still fill the air.

The vanquished champions flail with haymakers. The unlikely winners stand in awe, shifting to and fro, easily ducking the telegraphed punches. Retrospect awaits yet another few months. For now, the losing side appears to have little pugilistic skill, replaced with noise and rousing of chants, and the winners distract everyone with a rope-a-dope of dancing which shows poorly gained footing. 

The bulk of the nation cringes at the enraged and the dodgers, whether winners or losers, because both types stand among the extremes. My children call to me, searching for empathy and correction in my countenance, due to their belief in an expected continuance of the previous champions, and more sorrow over their fate than I show. Though I also did not expect a change in champions, I am much happier with the outcome than they.

Though the old winners were led by a legacy of collusion that my children did not support, but would deign to elect against the more worrisome competition, they had been rejuvenated by a spark of utopian revolution gathered at the common grounds of the universities of questionable common denominators. Questionable to a separate, working class revolution of common folk, who’s ideas profess conflicting values to the common denominators of the old winners. Meaning, their revolution lost twice, once to their electorate crowd in nomination and final selection, and my revolution won twice. The second win sealed the revolutionary windfall.

Their long faces are too much for a father to bear. 

I have attempted humor, which has only further opened the spigot of tragedy. Bad idea, and bad form. All revolutions are not void of humor, but the humor is parochial. Seen through the eyes of a conquerer, what comes forth as hilarity in tone smacks shockingly as cruelty and disregard to the loser. Likewise, what the losing revolution presents as high humor lands as disrespect and mocking meanness. I can’t justify my callous and rude humor as a parry, since sword fights are no longer legal. Thankfully.

I have also attempted conversation, but debate ensues. Usually, it takes the form of conflicting cards of combative evidence, flung until a pile of cards topples upon its own weight without any possibility of declaring a truce, much less a winner.

We are left, then, with passing prayers for the other to come to their senses. Unlike sports, where God’s participation finds happiness in both the stadium and the sidelines (usually with the team doctors), political elections ask God to bless the population and leave the hats in the ring to their own devices. God has specific words about dictators, like Caesar, but little for the elected officials. That’s because God’s values conflict with those who use them for their own recipes, wielding implements of legalism and odd hierarchies of moral principles.

So, we pray fervently that we all come to our senses. Not sensibilities, ideologies, knowledge, and opinions, but the sentient balance of respect and love for each other. That’s where the senses are meant to take us. We cannot play out a sentient balance without the divine, however. 

“Your will be done,” begins and ends our prayer.  And so we begin.