How precious is our democracy? How envied and valued is our American system of government? How important is it to the freedom of people everywhere?
To understand the answers to those questions, look no further than all of the terrible effort going into tearing it down and pulling it apart.
Russia, a great nation of rich culture, is sadly in the grip of a miserable strongman who despises America’s place in the world as a bulwark against oppression. The foundation we stand on is our democratic system, which each of us who goes to the polls is holding up.
It’s hardly any surprise then that Vladimir Putin’s agents in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere are doing all they can to disrupt this election and to turn us against one another.
What can we do in response? Some of it, of course, we have to leave to the professionals in government, intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy.
But some of it we can do ourselves. When a foreign power is intent on creating havoc and chaos, a wise nation answers with resolve, calm and patience. There will be problems on election night. Some of those problems may well come from interference and some will just be the errors fallible humans and fallible machines make. We won’t know the difference right away.
We can be almost certain all of the ballots will not be counted as fast as we will like. The only certainty is uncertainty.
This is worrisome. It can be frightening. If it happens that there is not a clear winner in the presidential race, it will be noisy. The press will cover it relentlessly, as we must. Social media will be on fire with every sort of rumor and fear. Russia, Iran and other foreign governments bent on hurting the U.S. will stoke those flames, as will internal agents of chaos.
We, the electorate, will have a duty to remain calm and to try to place trust in the institutions that have served us throughout our history.
We need to be patient and recognize that it could take time to sort out voting results in many areas. That’s OK. We are accustomed to getting everything now at lightning speed. But getting it right is more important than getting it right away.
We need to be careful of the information we take in and the information we share. A major reason why disinformation is successful is that it spreads quickly, scales fast and creates problems before it is refuted. Social media is the perfect vector for disinformation campaigns. Be skeptical of information on social media and urge others to be skeptical. Limit its use as much as you can. Seek trusted and established sources of information.
Finally, be courageous. That’s easy to write and harder to do. But fear is so often the seed of misfortune for people. As a wise president once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Whatever Tuesday’s outcome, and whatever uncertainty arises from it, we awake today as Americans. We will go forward together.
We must, for ourselves, for each other, and for the world.
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