I keep coming back to the conversation I had with an older man in a park in Chicago. One of those tentative explorations between two people enjoying the view. He asked me why I wouldn’t vote for the candidate he was considering. I liked the lonely old guy so I really considered my response and said: “I can’t because he enjoys cruelty”. That response shocked a silence and he changed subjects, but I saw he wasn’t so much offended as thinking it over.

This project talks about good not so much as a cognitive exercise in the power of positive thinking but rather as a discipline in the formation of integrity and character. Good is simply where every important decision needs to begin. Life offers all of us more than enough circumstances to cause other people pain, even when we cause that pain to effect good. Again, almost all of us hurt when we cause other people pain. Yet when a person actually seems to enjoy the infliction of pain and humiliation you have something broken on your hands. We have a political subculture right now that is broken. As they say, ‘you reap what you sow’ and that ancient proverb applies directly to the time we are in. Handing power to a person who cannot see or be concerned about the damage done by deliberate recreational cruelty is not just a mistake, it’s a generational catastrophe.

Some decisions are hard, but once you get you get your sense of good saddled up in the process of decision making, other decisions become easier and cleaner. That is what the nonviolent vote offers us. Any candidate who uses cruelty without regret or apparent pain can be excluded from your consideration for handling this nation’s lethal power. Love and concern for other people on this planet comes with a certain quotient of pain, regret and need to own up to mistakes. That, it seems is life. Not to be able to perform those critical human tasks of genuine repentance and atonement for a leader is a rolling disaster for us, our children and grand children.