Election Day was last week.

Fifty years to the day, I voted in my first election on Nov. 5. 1974. It wasn’t a presidential election. The main event was for governor. It was a race between then Secretary of State Jerry Brown and then State Controller Houston Flournoy.

One a liberal Democrat. The other a conservative Republican. And as surprising as this might sound, it was a boring election.

There were major policy differences. But there was no shouting. There were no insults flung. Hit pieces?

Not a one. Name calling? It wasn’t in them.

Brown ended up winning by just under three percent.

Fast forward 50 years. What the hell happened? Good question.

In the weeks leading up to the election, people on both sides in California were acting as if the outcome didn’t go the way they wanted it to do, that their neighbors on the other side would be responsible for the downfall of democracy.

Nice rhetoric, but way off the mark.

No one in their right mind should have expected California to go any way but for Kamala Harris. It isn’t as if one’s vote doesn’t count at all. But in reality, for at least the presidency as a California voter, it didn’t.

So was it worth it to slice and dice your neighbors who don’t think like you even though it was a given who was going to win California’s 54 electoral votes?

How does that work in trying to find common ground or at least try to get the other guy to hear your point of view?

That assumes, of course, one really cares about trying to communicate with the other side instead of simply wanting to fan the flames for the purpose of simply fanning flames.

The odds are, of course, that is exactly what people want to do — fan the flames.

But why? That may be a question for the ages. The answer may be above my pay grade, but I’ll give it a try.

We have allowed opportunists lead us away from the truth.

The truth is simple. What makes us strong as a country is our differences. That has been the case from Day One of the republic. The United States has never been a monolith. It started as the sum total of 13 colonies. Thirteen colonies with 13 different governments. Thirteen colonies with some common values. But that doesn’t mean they were in lockstep.

It took 116 days to draft the constitution. It wasn’t a slam dunk. There was plenty of disagreement. Yet they finally came to an agreement.

Of course it wasn’t done under the oppressive smothering shadow of TikTok, Facebook, X, and other social media where the depth of discussion wouldn’t get one’s proverbial toes wet. One assumes there was give and take. Coercion would have blown the constitution out of the water. So would have name-calling.

It begs the question. Were people less self-centered back then? Did they put country above self? Or were they simply more concerned about moving forward?

How about this: They realized they had a common goal of freeing the nation they were giving birth to, not just from the shackles of tyranny but made sure the United States didn’t wake up one day and discover it was no different from governance they were rebelling against that shackled people simply because they didn’t fall in line with the majority or kowtow to power.

Yet here we are. 

There’s plenty of people either turning bluer out of frustration or turning redder from rage — or vice versa — that want to do exactly what our founders feared. It is what happen when we belittle, play the elitist card, dismiss other viewpoints as being not just wrong but unacceptable, and look down on people based on education, occupation, skin tone, religion, party affiliation, general beliefs or what region or state they reside.

We are wrong to believe that the games Russia and other foreign actors are doing via social media is somehow for the benefit of one candidate or another. It is simply to cause chaos and turn Americans against Americans.

The domestic version of the same social media static may not be as nefarious but barely so. They are blinded by self-righteousness. They have bought 100 percent into the belief the ends justify the means regardless of the collateral damage.

So where do we go from here? Hopefully, we as a nation are not hell-bent on doing a remake of the movie “Groundhog Day” until the end of time. We need to stop acting like moths attracted to lights on an otherwise dark night when it comes to exploring ideas that are new or foreign to our comfort zone. We need to see what is beyond the familiar, not necessarily embrace it to any degree, but to better understand it. It may not move the dial in terms of where we stand, but an open mind at least makes you grasp the concept that all people don’t think alike. It will mean getting out of our comfort zone just like a bunch of British subjects on this side of the pond did 248 years ago.

This had been an election defined cynically by darkness and joy alike to conveniently sidestep the heavy lifting of using one’s mind and heart to discuss the ins and outs of issues instead of getting bogged down in the quick sand that platitudes can become or the tsunami of darkness that can one can easily drown in.

What Abraham Lincoln said on June 16, 1858 still rings true today: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Keep that in mind in the coming days, weeks, months, and years whether “your candidate” won or lost.

With a little luck, we can all summon the strength to hold our tongues a bit more often while at the same time opening our ears, minds and hearts. Who knows, maybe we can keep the republic for another 248 years.

—  This column is the opinion of Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Courier or 209 Multimedia. He may be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com