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The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

The Student News Site of Saint Louis University

The University News

Unsolicited Letter to Aspiring POTUS’

Unsolicited Letter to Aspiring POTUS’

Unsolicited Letter to Aspiring POTUS’: Sometimes, if you understand only ‘weak’ and ‘strong,’ you are blind to ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’

This year’s U.S. presidential election isn’t binary. It’s not red or blue, Coke or Pepsi, Clinton or Trump. On paper, it’s a choice between two options, but in reality it’s something bigger.

If recent news is to be believed, Clinton (both, as a collective proper noun) is linked, among other questionable acts, to cash donations disguised as speaking fees from international, wealthy power-peddlers. Trump … Trump is an aspiring chimp-pack leader (no offense to chimps), seemingly bereft of integrity, who appeals in part to a collective primal penchant for power-pyramids; and to so-called ‘realist’ opportunists who want a loud, irrational, stone- and other-organic-matter-flinging attention-seeker out front, behind whom they can rally; but who will inevitably exacerbate their fears for profit.

In my estimation, this election isn’t the proverbial choice between two evils. It’s a choice between what is and what could be. Democrats, Republicans, ye of any political persuasion: If your scale of right-to-wrong is weak or strong—if you think, believe and act as if life is a jungle, only the strong survive, you eat what you kill, might makes right, the strong do what they want and the weak do what they must—you are sitting on the problem.

We have a joint responsibility to make the world better, fairer, safer, more mature, more evolved, more caring, more respectful … one day, one decision, one critical thought, one feeling at a time; with compassion, vulnerability, forgiveness, intimacy, dedication and a deep reserve of inner strength rooted at the core to something bigger.

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There’s a more beautiful way of living, one with depth; but if you’ve only got one metaphorical eye, you aren’t going to see the depth. You’ll look at the world through your one eye and call anything different crazy, delusional, impractical, woo-woo, stupid, or—the biggest insult of all from that paradigm–‘weak.’

For some, it’s hard to move beyond the one-eyed viewpoint, because interests influencing modern socialisation want you kept in an immature state. They want you to keep buying things to sop up inner brokenness. They want to keep your mind easier to shape … easier to ‘win,’ if you will.

And to cap it all off, they—the one-eyed people—that’s us, America. That mythical out-group is us.

In life, we must struggle with something to lose juvenile arrogance: Struggle with culpability, accountability, responsibility; with losing, hurting or destroying something or someone we care about, whom we love; for causing pain when we only wanted to help or bring good.

As a certain bit of wisdom goes (paraphrased), when you are a child, you act, think and reason as a child; but when you grow up, you put away the childish things.

Let’s grow up.

Whatever the outcome, let’s learn from this, take greater responsibility for ourselves and our fellow humans, and dig deeper than we hope to ascend.

There’s something more beautiful around the corner… it might just take four more laps around the sun to build the foundations.

Sarah Hale UNews Opinion Editor 2005-09

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