Dear Descendants:
By now you know that the digital blog I wrote during the early years of the 21st Century was printed in multi-volume book form in order to preserve it and pass it on to you and others. At least three hard-bound copies were produced and two of them were given to my sons, Jonathan and Christopher. As I have stated in earlier posts, the blog was never intended in any way to be a political treatise or diatribe. [See, the posts dated November 9, 2016 and January 20, 2020] The blog is a genealogy/family history blog devoted to those subjects generally and more specifically to posts about our deep American family roots.
The above having been said, there are events that I experienced during my life that undoubtedly will be of historical significance and something you will have learned about as events of the past. I have often wished that I had some concrete evidence such as a diary or letter by an ancestor that told me (good or bad) how he or she felt about significant events and issues. I would be thrilled to have some definite evidence of what an ancestor believed about the enslavement of people in America at the time. Similarly, I would like to know for sure how an ancestor reacted to the forced removal of the Cherokee people and the Trail of Tears or who an ancestor voted for in the election of 1832–Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, or maybe the Anti-Mason candidate William Wirt–and why; but I do not have answers to those kinds of questions. So this blog occasionally posts my experience and views for my posterity so they need not wonder where I stood on issues and events of my days.
As I wrote in a post dated January 28, 2017, ". . . I should go on record as saying I am neither a registered Republican nor a registered Democrat. I am an American whose family [your family too] on both my mother's and my father's side have been in America since 1620 and 1640 respectively. I am invested in America!" Today is one of the most significant days on the calendar of American life. It is the day of the quadrennial national elections and this one pits Joseph Biden (Democrat) against Donald Trump (Republican and incumbent president) for the office of President of the United States. I believe it to be the most important and consequential election of my life to date and as I began drafting this post at 7:00 AM I felt I had to make my choice explicit for you, my descendants, to judge.
I voted for Joseph Biden.
Contrary to the hope I expressed in my post dated January 9, 2016, Donald Trump has not evolved and grown in office these last four years. He has been impeached and has continued his blustering, bullying, name calling and very un-presidential ways. But more importantly he has led an administration of corruption, incompetence, and when it comes to the handling of the COVID pandemic (of which you will undoubtedly know more about the ultimate outcome than we do as I write this) he has failed at the paramount duty of a president -- to keep the country and its residents safe. A litany of all the ways that I believe these descriptions of Mr. Trump's performance in office are so, would be too long to post here. Your history books will have examined and judged the validity or deficiency of my beliefs; what matters for the purpose of this post is to tell you clearly that I voted against Donald Trump for what I believe to be the sake of you, my descendants, and for the sake of a continued healthy democracy in this country.
The next several hours of this Tuesday, November 3, 2020 will probably not give us a definitive result in the presidential election because the country is so divided on the question of whether or not Mr. Trump and his party deserve another four years in office, that hundreds of lawsuits have been filed and threats have been made about contesting the results once they are in. I sit right here, right now, refusing to believe that the American people writ large will ultimately look at the last four years and re-elect Mr. Trump and his party back into power. I fervently hope that this proves to be true, but if not then you all will at least know where I stood and that I did what I could to prevent another four years under what I consider to be the most incompetent, self-absorbed, and self-promoting president in my life thus far.
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Image of campaign buttons from https://greencardbyinvestment.com/EB5-news/eb5-what-would-biden-trump-win-mean/
Image of man writing with feather quill pen from https://www.kissclipart.com/quill-pen-clipart-paper-quill-pen-i1r57s/
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Copyright 2020, John D. Tew
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Thank you. Intelligently and thoughtfully expressed.
ReplyDeleteAgree with you! Also I am curious as to why and how my ancestors voted. I do know my parents never told each other how they voted but my grandpa told my grandma how to vote. It was the old days.
ReplyDeleteDear Descendant is a wonderful way to address future generations, and they will appreciate you writing about your participation in a consequential election this year. TY for your post!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind comment Marian. I hope to make these messages to descendants a new (but probably sporadic) feature on the blog.
DeleteJohn