Blog 3208 – 08.14.2024

Looking Forward Not Back

How often we hear the quote, “They who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.” Though there is some truth in that statement it is also true that too much focus on the past will cause us to miss opportunities to improve our standing and situation. There is a very good reason that our eyes are placed on the front of our heads. A sure fire way to trip and fall is to not look where we are going, but backward at where we have been.

The current two candidates for President of the United States and their Vice Presidential Candidates have very different views on the state of our union and the direction that we need to be headed toward as a nation. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are like a broken record, an oldie goldie recording from the fifties, the supposed Golden Age according to conservative Republicans. The fifties were not golden for people of color, poor people, and women and many others in this country. The myth of those “good ole days” vaporizes in the clear light of historical facts.

We have a second opportunity to elect a person of color candidate for President, a woman vastly more qualified than a failed businessman and former President who not only lost his bid to be re-elected four years ago but is a now a convicted felon and has indictments pending in both state and federal courts for interfering with the peaceful transition of power and for misappropriation and misuse of top secret documents after leaving office.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are forward looking candidates who believe our best days are ahead of us not behind us. They want to take us forward as a nation, all of us, not just white folks, not just billionaires, not just men, nor upper and middle class people, but all of us. I think it is very telling that while Harris and Walz are making their case to all the people that Donald Trump’s Big Event is an online chat with fellow billionaire Elon Musk on Musk’s X social media platform. Is that supposed to reassure us that he has everyone’s best interest in mind? I think not.

With an eye to the future and a clear understanding not just of the triumphs of the past but our failures and shortcomings as a nation, we should recommit ourselves to making this a more perfect union extending the benefits of that union to more and more people not fewer.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White