My son, who preferred Obama over Romney had some pretty startling things to say............

[patrice]

132. It's always been the lesser of two evils & anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. PO has never

hidden the problems there are with policy in our political system. I'd like to see anyone produce a quote that contains, "I promise that I will give you ________." He has, in fact, shown a bright light on much of what does go on and has reminded everyone that he is not a king (though we have grown quiet comfortable under Republican kings), so what happens is to a large extent the effect of what individual persons, one at a time, DO and that's NOT people who are waiting around to see what everyone else is saying/doing, but those who work on understanding and seeing clearly enough what needs to be done in their own lives and set about figuring out how to do that.

The difference between "evils" is defined by each of our own, one-at-a-time INDIVIDUAL, active commitments and responsibilities for what happens.

An evil we are facing right now is the very real and dangerous fact of blow-back from our generations of violent actions in the world. What would you do if another country was responsible for killing lots of your friends and families? Forget? & What would you do if you were responsible for what happens with such people who are so passionately committed to revenge that they'd operate outside of all known laws for ALL time in order to do any one of the many many forms of harm that are possible upon your people who, while indirectly responsible for said crimes, are more innocent, or at least ignorant, compared to the real evil-doers, than they are guilty? - AND - even though you're responsible for what happens, there's no way to actually change those on all sides who are generating the hate and revenge?

If a person is maturing/developing person at all times, until you die, you can be passionately in love with our Constitution and respect our laws. People who are growing do not believe fairy stories just because it's fun and because they want to. Adults recognize the truth. It is the truth about all laws, including our Constitution, that they are imperfect (doesn't take much of a look at the Constitution to establish THAT). Their imperfection is in the nature of all things, but that doesn't mean that it must be accepted, nor does it mean that we should hate those flaws that truth/reality inevitably manifests, flaws like the necessity of defending ourselves. The challenge to all true lovers, including those who claim to love our Constitution, is to love the LIVING dynamic of a thing that we see manifested in interactions between "perfection" : "error".

This applies to the fact that it is not possible to write a perfect Constitution, nor perfect laws to suit every last single one of the, to all practical intents and purposes, infinite permutations of circumstances, some of them waaaaaay more dangerous than others, that need some degree of the stability. We have historically acted collectively to provide some degree of stability by our efforts to regulate ourselves and others through various means, including law and The Constitution, but we DO know that we CAN'T write perfect laws, though we talk about that effort, and the Constitution, all of the time as though we do. This is why process is so important, especially the processes known as law.

Law can't be perfect and if we tried, we'd have to write laws for absolutely everything and that's not only not possible the effort to do so is not desirable to human growth and development. You know this, I know this, everyone knows this, but too often, because of sloppy moral development, we pretend tooooooooo much that what happens is the responsibility of external authorities, like law, like The Constitution, like government, like churches, like mom & dad, or families, or our peers, so if I/we can just get away with it, it must be okay, right? And responsibility, and hence autonomy, remains FOREVER external.

Our history has placed us in an extremely dangerous environment. Our laws can't perfectly protect us. We really have ALWAYS depended upon the character and the primacy of individual conscience, though we pretend otherwise and that fact, our reliance on individuals to do the right thing, is only really just much more evident now than ever. EACH of us must make that conscience call and Presidents in particular have special challenges in that regard, so it would bode better for all of us if, as we make our own conscience calls, we take particular care with things like what we all just did on November 6 and pick people who demonstrably manifest the ability to think critically and honestly, decide and then to stake their own lives on the outcomes of what they do. And, yes, to me this means we should figure out how to elect more people who actually do live lives like our own.

Each of us must do our best to live in reality; we don't have to hate our imperfect laws and the imperfect Constitution to do that, in fact, we can love it better for what it really is and what it REALLY means about who we are by what each of us is becoming.