"It's complicated." – Israeli and Palestinian tour guides, same answer to many questions

ON THE EVE OF THE 2016 ELECTION, I said, "Be very surprised if there are no surprises in tomorrow's election." We can probably say the same thing this year. I'm more concerned about the aftermath of the election if the "math" doesn't add up for Biden. One-time sore losers could be twice as sore this time, and some people are in the mood for revolution.

Somewhere last year I picked up the July-Aug issue of the Smithsonian. I just picked it up to read last week – for the cover story, "A new way to SEE the Holy Land" by Geraldine Brooks. They meant a new way to tour. The two guides in the article were a 38-year-old Israeli who is in the Israel Defense Force and a 38-year-old Palestinian Muslim who helped found the tour guide company:

"MEJDI Tours is a full-service tour company [founded in 2009]. MEJDI Tours has operated tours in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority, Ireland and Northern Ireland, Jordan, Turkey, Iraqi Kurdistan, Spain, and Egypt, among others. They have organized Christian, Jewish, Muslim, university and Non-profit tours." -Google

Brooks had been to Israel in 1987 during the First Intafada (if you wonder what this has to do with a U.S. election, I'll get to that). Brooks says she sympathized with people on both sides, and was also frustrated with smug Americans who picked one or the other side and blamed the other. Sounds like 2020 politics over here. History has been replete with versions of our Blue v. "Red" battles:

• Blue v. Gray in 1860 America

• Reds v. Whites in 1917 Russia

• Orange v. Green in 1900s Ireland

• Black Lives Matter v. everyone else

• Radical greens v. regular greens in the 21st century

Don't you just hate it when the radicals claim that you like dirty air and water, and that there should only be one opinion allowed on any subject? Some people just don't want peace. Arafat once even turned down an offer of everything he had been asking for. I expect more riots here no matter who the winner of the election is. Antifa and BLM would continue Burning, Looting, & Murdering no matter what we were to offer them. The Confederates wouldn't even listen to Lincoln's offers and seized Federal property before he was even inaugurated, overrunning their headlights. Human nature is "funny" that way. No foresight, even if this is "2020" time.

I wonder if Mejdi Tours will survive the worldwide epidemic? Satan must have been angry about them, among many other people. One of the tour guides mentioned above was Aziz Abu Sarah (interesting name for a Palestinian), an archeologist by trade. He caught the attention of a former director of George Mason University's conflict and peace management department, and the rest is history.

Geraldine Brooks is also a novelist and says that writers of fiction imagine and write about the impossible. I seldom read fiction but have begun writing short story fiction late in life, and a future world without war is a topic dear to my heart. With God the difficult is a snap of a finger. The Impossible just takes a while. Truth be told, He's just waiting for man to get TIRED of war, wars of any kind. I post at least once a year my column "Grandpa, tell us again about those Bad old days." I would recommend it for new readers and Friends on Facebook.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/dahlgren/200415 A hint as to how to achieve the Impossible:

[ . . Then you turn right, face the North star, and call on the God of the Four Winds. You get down off your high horse and put four on the floor, your two hands and your two knees, like the prophet Elijah, with your ankles crossed, your face on the floor, your hands on your head and your elbows on your knees. And if you want to look smaller, you just squeeze and make yourself look like a ball. Then we say "Thank you Father!" And so now you're ready to go to bed and get a good night's sleep.

Goodnight Grandpa.

Goodnight Ismail. Goodnight Sarah. Goodnight Grandma. And you too, Jon Boy.]

P.S. Last week's column ended with "How long go ye limping, America, between two opinions" because there are no 50 shades of grey between Goodness and Pure Evil. But the Devil gets into the details. Christians, Jews, and Muslims essentially all worship the God of Abraham but disagree on the spelling (EL versus "AL").

Yes some things are black-and-white, but there are three sides to the coin: heads, tails, and the edge (where the thorny details are). By the time you read this, I pray that our peace-making President will have won the election.

PPS: It's harvest season in Wisconsin, praise the Lord. But when I look at a combine harvesting the corn, I can't wait for the first electric-powered 12-row combine. A little sarcasm there. A child of five could understand this. Sorry but Curt and Curtis ("courtesy") have opposite meanings. I'm "bi-polar" in the right way. You can say that again.

Too many smug people can only look at one side of the coin, and think the whole world is crazy but THEM (a little irony there).