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Letter: We need to stop repeat of 2016 election
Op-Ed · November 17, 2016


The most important agenda item president-elect Trump best plan on pursuing is the encouragement of WE THE PEOPLE to fix our presidential selection system in a manner that avoids the American electorate ever again being caught with a final choice between the likes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.


Aside from that, best he and Congress content themselves with rearranging the deck chairs on a Ship of State that is in danger of becoming another Titanic. Anyone that thinks that now is the time to sail boldly forward into this storm of great discontent might consider how it would feel to have their feet stuck in soggy shoes of alarm with their ship of fate manned with the other piratical captain at the helm.

For the rest of us: if we are to move on (be it nothing more than limping) and avoid the nation coming apart, people of goodwill and concern for our land and its people are going to need to turn away from vitriolic expressions and the projections of destructive passions onto others. For the next four years we need to attempt to make the best of the fact that we were going to elect one of the two most broadly disliked and distrusted candidates in American history. Whichever candidate won was going to be greeted by a vast majority of two-thirds of the public with regret of their being the final selection. This is a product over the years of masses of our citizens failing to participate in the nomination and election of our most important national leader and in doing so via truly democratic means.

We need to survive what has now happened and join in fixing the system that has led to what is so unacceptable to masses of Americans and frankly masses of people in the rest of the world. There may be some vandals among us who will not heed this need and as best all of the rest of us can they need to be shunned with calm response or just silence.

Sam Osborne

West Branch