Thankful for the choosing, regardless of the choices

A column by a journalist friend of mine, Steve Brawner:

The 2024 election season can produce many feelings, including dread, despair and disappointment. What if we tried gratitude?
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It is an imperfect system to be sure. Voters decide based on wrong and limited information and often elect the wrong people. The nation is divided, and Congress has become so partisan and dysfunctional that it can’t even debate the nation’s challenges, much less meaningfully address them. Traditions like accepting the voters’ will and the peaceful transition of power are less treasured than they once were.

But the American system has helped produce a standard of living and human freedom that people across the world envy, aspire to, and try to copy or escape to. If we need a wall along the southern border, it’s to channel the flood of people desperate to come here, not lock our own people in. That is not the case in some places.
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Finally, apart from all that big-picture stuff, gratitude is good for the soul. The truth is, we are blessed. If we focus on the fact that things are messed up while ignoring that things are also still pretty good, we will become – or remain – a miserable people living in a land of plenty. Frankly, we should be ashamed of ourselves for this.

In the next two months, Americans will go to the polls and cast our ballots. Many of us might have to hold our noses and select the least objectionable candidate in some races. We do not have to be thankful for those particular choices.

But we should be thankful for the choosing itself. Let’s try. There are many worse forms of government out there in this world of sin and woe, and many people live under them.

- rest of column at Independent Arkansas: Thankful for the choosing, regardless of the choices