Viewpoints 2012: Turning points

Every once in a great while, a turning point is reached. This is the point where we can go towards two goals, the point where everything can change for the better or the worse.

Life is filled with choices. This includes those choices you weren't even aware you were making. I'm not talking about the choices like what to wear, because that's not an unconscious choice. Still, how many are aware of what side they chew their food on? How many know which foot you lead down a flight of stairs?

Then there are the subconscious choices, the ones that you're only barely aware of. Who knows which button to push on the car radio as you get ready to drive? While driving, how many are actually aware of the speed limit? How many actually follow it? These choices aren't entirely automatic, but they do give us a clear picture.

And, of course, those choices we really make.

But this isn't about the choices of a few, or about ways to notice what doesn't really need to be mentioned.

As individuals, as states, as a nation and, maybe, even the whole world, there comes a choice along that has the essence that it could change the destiny of us all.

In a little over three weeks, such a turning point will come, something that could go from each individual to the very fabric of our nation, but, again, it becomes an individual choice, the fourth kind.

This is what I call the turning point. These are the choices that make us who we are. These are the ones that we should regard with careful attention and detail, something that, overall, we need to be very careful on.

It's like trying to decide if someone who has done you wrong deserves resentment or forgiveness, whether they ask for it or not. It's like feeling there's something wrong and whether you go to the doctor or not. It's like trying to decide whether to go with the medicinal, the herbal or the completely organic in order to tread some conditions.

It's like trying to decide whether to trust the news media and TV ads or whether to seriously investigate the candidates for not only POTUS, but all candidates in your ballot come Nov. 6.

Would you consider it a better record on the economic front to have someone with a record of putting the nation further into debt so that, if it were a company, the nation would have to declare bankruptcy, or would you trust someone who has turned many businesses around from near disaster to economic success? Would you prefer the candidate who consistently points out, with complete accuracy, his opponent's real issues or the candidate who picks up, as an icon, a beloved children's character even though there is likely to be enough funding to keep “Sesame Street” on PBS or switch it over to Nick, as well as consistently misrepresenting and lying about his opponent?

Would you vote for someone who is consistently a socialist and, perhaps, not even a legitimate candidate for president, or would you prefer someone who is a capitalist above all else, wants everyone to be in a better spot than they are, and is easily the only visible candidate who is legitimate?

Would you prefer the party that, when one of the members supports the other, slaps them on the back and wishes them luck, or the party that, when one of the members supports some of the others, calls them names, insults them, insinuates about them and basically lambastes them for it?

In other words, would you prefer the party that behaves more like an intelligent group of adults or a party where they behave more like a group of spoiled rotten bratty 5-year-olds?

Finally, would you vote for a party that runs a straight-up, straightforward campaign, like the one for Mitt Romney, or would you think the party that is guilty of many dirty tricks, from making it possible for illegal aliens to vote, to creating the Libertarians in order to draw more votes away from Romney, in order to ensure four more hellish years with Barack Obama.

This is the turning point that this nation will face on Nov. 6. I know many, like me, have already made up their minds whom to follow, and many others who have not. I do encourage you to really consider what needs to be done for, as in the entire concept of the turning point, this election is not just for now, not just for the next four years, but for, perhaps, the entire future of the United States of America as the country the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America would be proud of or one they wouldn't even recognize.

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