This is a day of high drama coming out of a nation that appears so divided it  may never recover its bipartisan normalcy, to 'forgive' a neighbour for thinking and feeling politically at odds with yourself. When Obama was first elected he pledged that he would make an effort to restore comity within the country which had brought a biracial man to the presidency for the first time in its history. He failed. Another astonishing occasion occurred when a man with no political experience but ample business and show business in his background brought the Republicans back to the White House. A man whose behaviour divided the country even further.

From the perspective of an interested Canadian looking in from the outside toward a country which is somewhat familiar for having lived there for several years and vacationed there frequently over a longer period of years, the dichotomy between Republicans and Democrats has been hastened and the gulf become a veritable chasm. As an outsider positivity and negativity is in full view emanating from both political positions. It is a situation where 'a pox on both their houses' seems to fit rather well since neither seems any longer to fully embody the nobility of spirit and mind that the best of America is capable of.

The hotly contested election is on the cusp of being declared for one, against another. Whichever party wins, the other will never accept the decision of the electorate. In the last election when a 'deplorable' ascended the presidency, the Democratic elite denied the reality of the situation, ascribing that win to malign forces and foreign interference. Throughout the full four years of the Republican office holder's occupation of the White House resistance against his lawful democratic choice was front and centre. Now that the situation has reversed, a similar scenario will unfold.

Americans whose racial and economic divides have always been a boil resistant to lancing toward full equality, justice and opportunity leading to protests, riots and violence expressing the public pressure of resentment and rage, are set to continue. All countries and all politicians and all leaders have their problems, sometimes solvable, often intractable, and it appears that the United States of America has settled into theirs with a resolute permanency.

Other than that, for the moment, all's right with our world. A world still on tenterhooks of concern and curiosity, a world enveloped within a viral caul of malign threat, doing our utmost to manage our lives and hoping for the great scientific minds of humanity to usher in a life-saving therapy of deliverance from the evil threat that nature occasionally in her casual indifference tosses our way.