Less than one year from now, voters will pick the next president of the United States.

Between now and then, things will get nasty.

Donald Trump still must slay a handful of opponents to secure the Republican nomination, which seems likely but isn’t a surefire thing. Expect him to levy some mean attacks against those trying to dethrone him, and expect those hoping to topple him to hurl attacks back.

Joe Biden will continue to face calls for him to drop out of the race because of his age, his unpopularity, the economy. Some of those calls will get mean, too, and his supporters will get mean right back.

If, as expected, Trump and Biden secure their respective nominations, they’ll turn their attacks on each other. Their supporters will attack the other camp’s supporters.

We the people don’t have to participate in all that nastiness.

We can feel passionate about our support for our candidate and passionately disagree with the other candidate. We can and should participate in the process in whatever ways we think we can help our cause — attend rallies, put signs in our yard, hand out flyers, go door to door for our candidate.

But, through all of that, we can and should practice kindness and understanding.

We can and should realize that those who support the other candidate only want what’s best for their family, their neighborhood, their town, their state, their country, just like we do. They just think a different candidate can get us there.

The other side isn’t inherently evil.

We the people need to practice civility and kindness and respect, to show our political leaders we can disagree without being disagreeable. We can be passionate without being vindictive. We can care about our positions and care about our neighbors whose positions are different.

Maybe, if we practice kindness enough among ourselves, our political leaders will take notice and start to practice it among themselves.

America would be a better, calmer, more productive place if that happened.

So, this election season, vote for kindness.

Let’s lead our leaders down the path to civility.

(THE ALPENA NEWS)