ISawArkansas

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There is a power to prayer. We believe that because so many people have claimed that prayer saved them from death, foreclosure, tornadoes or addiction.

But what is prayer? Is it a thought that pops into your head when you assume there is a very big man in the sky who is listening and can instantly change your plight if He’s a mind to? Is prayer wishing? You can probably pray to God only so long before it becomes nagging.

Voters pray. Especially now, it seems, even though voters are divided as rigidly as Arkansas and Texas.

Those who are willing to pay attention to their conscience will vote. They might fret that their vote makes no difference, or they might believe that their vote makes all the difference. Either way, they’re aware of their civic duty and performing it, and we might want to pray for them while they pray for their wishes to come true.

So much attention is being paid to national and international kerfuffles that we’re shouting back and forth about how others, particularly those in Congress, should vote on impeachment. That is a vote no one is going to change their mind about. Lots of scolding, few suggestions, no compromise.

Don’t we all want the same thing? Peace? Peace in the world would be nice, maybe we could celebrate World War None, but peace in our government could easily trickle down to peace in our heads.

A woman told me a couple of weeks ago that when Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Russian and Ukrainian, took his family on holiday to Crimea, they were suddenly surrounded by soldiers who cut the phone lines and placed him under house arrest. It was a military coup brought to a huge, powerful country by those who fed their soldiers meat and hate.

Boris Yeltsin became President of the Russian Federation, and tanks filled the streets of Moscow. Groceries had no food on the shelves. Electricity was on and off. Children were frightened into immobility. Chaos and unemployment reigned.

“You really don’t know how lucky you are in your country, even if you see it as hopeless. Or folly,” she told me.

One of the reasons Gorbachev was ousted and Yeltsin instated was because of that old liberal vs. conservative way of looking at things. Gorbachev wanted journalistic freedom and general reform. He wanted his country and its people to thrive. He curbed alcoholism by 40 percent by raising the legal age, not selling hootch before 2 p.m. and making harsh penalties for workers who drank on the job.

Yeltsin, a heavy drinker, wasn’t amused.

But Yeltsin took command, the people were suppressed, and physics profs became taxi drivers until Yeltsin handed the keys to Vladimir Putin, who’s been leading for 20 years. Workers’ predicaments aren’t cheerful, and there are now more billionaires in Moscow than anyone ever dared pray for, but it’s due to corruption, not ingenuity.

It can happen in a heartbeat, so it’s a good idea for those who can vote to actually vote, and not allow their freedoms to be taken away by someone who doesn’t mind hoodwinking and stealing. Someone who will steal will do anything.