Is this election only "a stay of execution"?

That's the opinion of Selwyn Duke, who writes:

Many people lament that “Obama has destroyed America these last eight years” or, alluding to same, will say “I don’t recognize my country anymore.” This is much like viewing a woman who marries a greasy-haired, dope-smoking, heavily tattooed and pierced, unemployable reprobate and saying that her matrimonial decision destroyed her, when the real problem was that she was the kind of person who could make such a choice in the first place. Do you really think Obama isn’t a symptom at least as much as a cause? Do you think the 2008 A.D. America that elected him would have been recognizable to 1950 Americans?

And even if the next president is an anomalous good result, he won’t even be a pause that refreshes, but will at best slow down the runaway train racing toward the precipice. This is because our main problems aren’t illegal migration, trade deals or health care, as significant as those things are. Our problems are more fundamental.

. . .

We can put as much lipstick on this pig of preference-oriented decision-making as we want, but it amounts to this striking reality: we are a people that, to a great extent, now operates by the credo “If it feels good, do it.” Yet there’s another way of putting it, one clarifying matters even more.

Many of us now believe, in essence, there are no rules governing man.

And we often behave that way.

. . .

To understand the effects of this no-rules mentality, a little analogy is instructive. Imagine that baseball players came to believe there were no rules governing the sport, that it was “whatever works for you.” A pitcher might decide there should be only one strike, while a batter might reckon there should be five. A first baseman might insist that the hitter shouldn’t be able to run past first base, while the hitter might say he should be able to run past all of them. And things would continue degenerating, with everyone writing his own ticket and battling over standards, until, perhaps, players began tackling one another and sometimes wielding the bats as weapons. Games can’t work without agreed-upon rules.

. . .

Why do you think we have candidates who scoff at enforcing immigration law and a president and judges who wipe their paws and claws on the Constitution? In a land where all is relative, laws are relative to the men; then you become a nation of men, not laws.

There's more at the link.

It's hard to disagree with Mr. Duke's thesis, although I'm somewhat more optimistic than he is.  I think there's still a solid core of US society that does adhere to values and standards, and tries to live according to them.  Unfortunately, that core appears to be shrinking by the day.  It's up to us who hold to such standards to try to spread them by example, rather more than by words;  to show in our everyday lives that there's a better way.  It may be a losing battle, but that doesn't mean it's not one worth fighting.

Peter