MISSOURI WATCH: IT'S MOURNING TIME IN AMERICA

Only in America does it occur every four years, only to recur the next quadrennium. Ad infinitum.

It is our nation's time of crisis and mourning, 180 days of sheer torture.

Even the Statue of Liberty seems to weep for her adopted land.

The season invariably begins with hope, even cautious optimism, for this will be the time, we tell ourselves, when the benefits will outweigh the agonies that were inflicted 48 months before. We even resist the foreboding sense of deja vu, the memory of horrific times past.

But as the moment for its beginning grows closer and closer, the mind turns to recalling the pain, the agony and, worst of all, the despair.

Despite wholesale promises of low-volume dialogue, constructive discussion, reasoned logic, the tide of anger begins to rise, even in the earliest moments.

Soon the cacophony of discussion increases the level of debate. Soon the daily assessments of the competition heighten the tension of each one involved.

It is then only a matter of time until the contest is not about what is best for those who were to be served but what is best for those doing the serving.

All too quickly it is about winning.

Gone is the reason, tossed out along with yesterday's pledges of maturity, logic, honesty and newly found vision.

Gone is the once-stated goal to enrich not the individual but to serve the common welfare, to enrich not one segment but everyone, rich and poor, young and old.

Gone is the rare voice of reason, drowned out by discordant voices that would deafen the deaf.

What begins as a solitary parade to fulfill a nation's greatness in history is joined by others who have no stake in the ephemeral dream of reasonableness. Having no direct stake in writing history, they ignore what is past, forgetting the lessons of the prologue. The vision declared at the beginning becomes dimmer and dimmer. Soon it disappears altogether.

The measured march to consensus, commonality and caring turns from an orderly procession to a take-no-prisoners riot. Never mind what happened to the original goals, whatever they were no one can now remember, for the objective has changed.

The goal is now to win, regardless of what it takes, regardless of the harm to the national fabric, regardless of future consequences, regardless of the expedient burial of truth.

America is never at a greater loss for leadership than when America spends 150 days to find it. For some strange and unfathomable reason, it never seems to occur to the now-mindless aspirants to display, right now, the leadership they promise to deliver when and if they win the race.

What better way to display these qualities than when they are least obvious? What irony, expressed at the moment that honor, restraint, integrity, decency are most needed.

Those who join the fight for truth are convinced theirs is the only truth. This conviction is the only justification they feel is required to do whatever is necessary to destroy the enemy, with whatever means at hand. The feeling we express as patriotism is at the extreme end of nationalism, wandering over the line to fanaticism, which some only believe exists in the biographies of leaders such as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. We are not fanatics, only patriots, the participants all declare with earnest voices, forgetting that the aim of fanatics is also winning at any cost, while patriots seek unity.

Patriotism, you say? Those who debase our political system and all who participate in it are now standard fare in these troubled times in our great democracy. We have invented a lexicon that invokes the worst in mankind, not the best. We want our hatred to show our patriotism, but it displays something far more revealing. It reveals a fanaticism that is both frightening and reviling.

Every four years America spills anger, insult, distortion, vitriol, expediency, yet the nation needs none of these commodities and is weakened by their ominous presence.

Our country needs virtue and integrity during these 150 days, not dirty tricks and duplicitous politicians. May we be delivered from our awful morass by those who possess the courage to change what seems changeless, restoring truth and honor to what has become America's time of mourning.

Amen.

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.