By NICOLE BURROWS

I decided to take a morning drive along the scenic route through the rolling hills, looking for some inspiration in the yellows, oranges, reds, and browns of the Fall season.

It’s my favourite time of year to be here. It’s extremely peaceful and picturesque and it leads me to reflect on what my senses instinctively extract from the environment around me. I am enveloped in serenity. My thinking becomes more profound, more organised.

I discover new meaning in recalled experiences … the ones that flood my mind in this Fall rapture. I can see and smell the beauty of nature through the early morning mist and crisp morning air; I am at one with my physiology, and, somehow, it purifies the contaminated, problem-ridden reality of human life.

This kind of impromptu drive is the perfect thing to do to escape modern life. Take a ride on an old farm road. Imagine what life used to be like on this same land hundreds of years ago, and the concerns of the real indigenous people who walked these parts of the forests that are now roadways for automobiles. How could anyone navigate such dense and uneven vegetation? It affords a whole new respect for the land of the original inhabitants, and underscores the disrespect they have received as the original Americans, with others deciding it was not their land.

I suppose that story is better analysed at another time. But, truly, we are all travellers in this world, all foreign to any place called home, regardless of where we are born. We all came from somewhere else. And no other land in the world is home to people from somewhere else as America is.

But on this serene drive, in this changing season - not the Fall season, but the election season - I see yard signs for America’s preferred presidential and vice presidential candidates. In most of these neighbourhoods, most residents don’t display actual signage on their properties, so it’s not sufficient to conclude anything from the fact that you see more of one set of names than any other … except for the fact that you know exactly where you are and what history has to say about what happens here and what has happened here before.

The signs themselves won’t indicate who will win the election, but when there is a sign to be found on someone’s property around these hills and valleys, it tends to bear the names ‘Trump’ and ‘Pence’.

It always intrigued me that a city identified as one of predominantly black citizens could sit and thrive in the midst of a state identified as a predominantly white state. Some take that one step further to say that whites make up the most of the population of the state while blacks are a minority, because whites were mostly Republicans in the state’s history. And that’s not to say that black people can’t be Republicans or that only white people are, or that black Republicans or white Democrats don’t exist, but it’s a reminder of a past most would sooner forget, where racial tensions were high in a place where political affiliation was defined by economic privilege, and economic privilege was mostly defined by race. Republicans were wealthy, and the wealthy were mostly white.

Wealthy whites were Republicans who wanted slavery to persist and blacks to remain enslaved because it brought them more money. Being a wealthy white Republican played a big role in the endurance of slavery. Cotton picked by slaves was big business for wealthy southerners, but can that alone, from then to now, explain why this state is still regarded as a red state?

In 200 years, nothing much has changed?

Perhaps there’s another factor at play. People of the old South tend to be Christian zealots, bible thumpers, who tie Christian religious principles to the core of the Republican party. But how could Christianity, a religion for all, tie itself to the philosophy of money-grabbing capitalism at all costs? Because this world is upside down, the reality of Republican principles measured against Republican practices are incongruent.

In stark contrast to Republicans, in these modern days, people who vote for Democrats tend to be large minority groups, whether their minority affiliations are based on ethnicity/race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc. The downtrodden, the abused, the forgotten, the neglected … the repeatedly disadvantaged groups of people are the people who tend to vote in favour of Democratic leaders. They are in essence people who, given the basic principles of Christianity, should be welcomed with open arms by Republican Christians … by a party that claims to be interested in having a better country, yet it preaches divisive rhetoric.

From all evidence, the only better country Republicans want is one with more money and more guns. I’ve never heard a Republican or Republican supporter argue in favour of anything other than more money (less taxes) or more guns, except fewer immigrants. How can anyone take them seriously? By extension, how can anyone take Donald Trump seriously? The party and the person are contradictions of the philosophies they are meant to engender.

So who are these people on my peaceful drive with ‘Trump-Pence’ signs stuck in the soil of their front lawns? Can we safely assume that they already do, or would soon, espouse the division that Trump is pushing as the want-to-be head of the Republican party and the leader of the free world? Do the people who would vote for Trump really identify with the very same ideology as Trump and the wider party of Republicans, or are they just voting Republican because they’re anti-Democrat? You know, born a Republican, die a Republican, that sort of thing?

How much of the American population will vote based on Republican party affiliation and entrenchment rather than universal issues which should be resolved for the benefit of most? How many will vote Republican today because they agree specifically with Trump’s thinking process and prejudices? How many will vote Republican today only because they swear their allegiance to the Republican party, regardless of who is at the helm?

Why do veterans, who are essentially victims of war, want to vote for Trump and the Republican party, when Republicans are the ones who believe in guns and back wars with millions of dollars of investments in companies that supply wars with armaments?

Much like the Bahamas, the United States is faced in this general election season with choosing between two leaders in the two largest parties who are less than favoured for very different reasons: one who is experienced, maybe too experienced that it becomes untrusted, and one who is imbecilic with no experience, combined characteristics that are also not trusted. I suppose it comes down to one question. Of only those two choices, is it preferable to be led by someone who knows how to work the system, or someone who has no clue? … because any other consideration is too subjective a point upon which to base this decision.

In my estimation, the lady will lead America after today’s votes are all in. And I say this because I strongly believe, especially now, that the disadvantaged people of America make up larger numbers than the advantaged in America, and the disadvantaged will vote for a Democratic president.

Were the Republicans to win this election, it would come as a great surprise to me, and it would only point - with a very large finger - to the America that seeks division and not solidarity … and there’s nothing united about that kind of America. But I doubt the Republicans will win this next presidency, because, for all the money they can inject into an election, there are many wealthy Democrats with considerable influence … enough to sway dejected people to vote into office another Democratic president, so that their needs can be served, if not well-served.

The sad irony about this, though, is that the number of disadvantaged continue to grow from year to year. Minorities of all kinds proliferate. And because of this I don’t imagine that America will see another Republican president for a long time to come … not until Republicans start to resemble Democrats as they once did ... in the origins of their party.

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