Voters' feelings and truths

Ballots get mailed to all Skagit County voters Friday. No need to rush your voting. You have till 8 p.m. Nov. 8 to deposit the ballot in a drop box. If you mail it through the post office, do that by Friday, Nov. 4. It has to be postmarked by Nov. 8 to get counted. Warning: Ballots go to Seattle before getting postmarked.

The Weekly News is making its annual endorsement of you, the voters, as the most critical people in the election equation. Taking former President Ronald Reagan’s mantra, “trust, but verify,” this paper implores every voter to search their soul, wrestle with their conscience and wrack their brains to examine and decide on the facts and what is true in the process of choosing candidates.

Yet, the bet is peoples' feelings will dominate.

The Weekly News, on its news pages and editorial page reports the absolute truth that the coronavirus is real, that over one million Americans have died from the disease since 2020. People that believe the pandemic is a hoax or that the common flu is equally dangerous are carrying false information. Like those infected with a virus, they are a danger to themselves and their communities. Any candidate holding these positions is equally dangerous.

Likewise, fellow citizens, the fact is that Joe Biden won the presidential election. That is a horrifying truth to some. The more horrible and terrifying truth is that Donald Trump committed treason against the United States, planning and setting loose an insurrection against the government he led.

This is a time when democracy is in peril from individuals and organizations playing people like drums, leading them, as the pied piper did in a fable, not merely astray but out of the land of our stable society. This is neither gloom nor doom nor crazy talk. This has been growing for decades and amplified in the last five years by the greedy, amoral titans of social media companies.

In 1858 Abraham Lincoln said, “I hope I am over wary. There is, even now, something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passion in lieu of sober judgment.”

Righteous passion is energizing and contagious, creating a positive feedback loop in an in-person crowd or individuals connected by keyboards and clicks. Shaped into anger, it amplifies. In America it has advanced from furious to dangerous.

Sober judgment, however, is often an individual process. There is the mind of reason, the heart of conscience and the soul of ethics. While we can decide to believe the most fantastic things, that voting machines were manipulated and ballot boxes either stuffed or spirited away, passion must be supported by facts examined in the light of day.

That is what our courts have done. Those rejecting these decisions have stepped outside the bounds of our common society. Be wary before joining them there.

As president, Lincoln said, “So hard it is to have a thing understood as it really is.”

Before deciding on your candidates and their party when voting, test yourself on this possible truth: Is it true that insurrection is the only path to fixing our democracy?

Think about the Skagit County auditor and her staff, your neighbors working at the election office: Are they crooked and in conspiracy to steal democracy from you?

In the end, these are questions of the heart and soul and not of the mind.

Does your heart long to live as one country under God or ache to separate into the righteous and the damned?

Voting starts once you get your ballot and ends Nov. 8.