America is at war with itself

and the clock is ticking!

In six weeks it will all be over, except that it will not, we fear. November 5 cannot come soon enough but we dread that day and its aftermath. Has any election since 1860 unleashed more malevolent spirits? The Left never accepted the 2016 election; many on the right tried to overturn the follow-up four years later — through legal and illegal means.

Maybe we’re just old, but we know we are tired. We remember gracious concession speeches on Election Day. Nixon, presiding over the Senate, announcing the election of JFK. 

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A news story up at our favorite Madison WI daily newspaper is headlined: “Election officials prepare for threats with panic buttons, bulletproof glass.” Never mind police in our troubled high schools, the governors in the seven or so battleground states would be well advised to put armed guards at polling places. 

It would help if candidates would quit framing this election as likely the last free election, if they would not propose suspending the Constitution, or prosecuting novel legal cases, or casting their opponents as evil. It would also help if people would quit shooting at our candidates! Losing to the other guy is not the end of America as we know it. But refusing to accept the results may well be.

Sometimes the best candidate loses. (Which explains Blaska’s many defeats.) When 60 or so court decisions, state and federal, rule against you — maybe you really did lose! Here in Wisconsin, the conservative WI Institute for Law & Liberty and the nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau declared the 2020 results were honest. Or is the conspiracy so widespread that everyone — even Republican governors and AG Bill Barr — are in on it?

“Unsubstantiated claims of a ‘stolen’ election is not sustainable in a democracy … seriously weakening the country.” — the report “Lost Not Stolen,” signed by eight notables, including two former Republican U.S. Senators and retired federal Judge J. Michael Luttig.  

 Can we do this?

That is why many of us have joined with former Republican Gov. Scott McCallum in the Wisconsin Alliance for Civic Trust (WisAct) to “promote trust in our political system, support for fair, safe, and secure elections, and peaceful engagement with our fellow Americans.” Here in the Madison metropolitan area, former Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and this dues-paying Republican have signed on.

We encourage you to join us in this effort. No dues, no ask other than to stand up — by name — to demonstrate a groundswell of support for civility. Put simply, this democratic republic can survive only with good and gracious losers. Take this petition to your club or church group.

 A true patriot admitted defeat

Here in the Stately Manor’s Dan Quayle Reading Room sits David McCullough’s well thumbed bio of John Adams. This Founding Father committed an act as patriotic as anything for which Washington and Lincoln are celebrated.

At 4 o’clock in the morning, “under clear skies lit by a quarter moon,” John Adams caught public transportation (a horse-drawn stage coach) from what was then called “the President’s House” to make way for the man who defeated him. As the first President to be defeated for re-election, Adams left the new capital city “Rolling through empty streets past darkened houses.”

After so vicious a contest for the highest office, with party hatreds so near to igniting in violence, a peaceful transfer of power seemed little short of a miracle. — John Adams, by David McCullough.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: We could use another miracle.

Can YOU help make that miracle?