The election has passed. More than excited, partisan or a color, I am troubled. This is a critically important election and certainly a referendum on President Trump and the Republican Party. But whether the results are decisive for one party, giving legislative mandates, or whether we wake up November 7th with more of the same divided government, post voting, where will the nation stand as “We the People?”

The only color I can see in the new year is the color of “knot,” of rancor, of dissatisfaction, unhappiness and mistrust. The only certainty I sense is one side knowing that the other side is wrong. Both sides want this “wave” election to be theirs, washing the losers out to sea.

There is a huge difference between governing and ruling. Governing requires relationship, negotiation, cooperation, a search for common ground. Ruling rams through a rigidity of righteousness, of forcing positions, an all or nothing, of nothing getting accomplished if the party in charge does not have the votes to carry the day.

If one party enters 2019 with a mandate, in Washington, D.C. or Olympia, or both capitals, will anything move most of us toward governing – working together? I fear not.

How to get to a common future when common problems cannot be defined and priorities cannot be agreed upon? And I am stuck because I don’t offer a “pox on both your houses” and do not find both parties equally to blame. As soon as this analysis starts to take shape, walls go up and dialogue ceases.

What are the most pressing problems of the next 50 years? Is it unchecked immigration? Muslim terrorists? Legal abortion? Varieties of marriage and bathroom use that are not heterosexual? Creeping socialism?

Resolve each of these by the dictates of the Republican platform. Climate change creeps – leaps – forward still. None of those issues solved stops hurricanes, wildfires, melting ice caps, drought, the inexorable advance of climate change. Secure borders do not protect Americans from internal income inequality, from homelessness, from stagnant wages.

I am flummoxed by the divide in perception and reality.

What color will the election be? Will there be a wave? If citizens are the drops of water determining the size of the wave, and one side sweeps through, who does their tidal wave wash away? If one side creates a tsunami, what will the aftermath mean for the other side having destruction wreaked upon them?

After the hurricane blows through, what will we do with all the pieces scattered about? Who will pick them up? Who will help the survivors, care about the victims?

And then what? Another big one comes by, perhaps wrought by the other side. More battering, more struggling for survival.

This is not a weather pattern or a forecast. This is our social reality. Before, after election day, I don’t know how to get out of the way, change the direction.

Voting, a demonstration of democracy, is supposed to be a civilized exercise, part of the process of knitting our society together. Why do we so often recite the pledge of allegiance if the words are hollow, without meaning?