Here's to a peaceful election day

America's great poet of another divisive era, Walt Whitman, is right that our "swordless conflict" is greater than any historical battle. Let's keep it that way.

One of my perennial favorites.

The 1884 election was a filthy mud fest, even by today’s sad standards. It had fake news, lies, personal attacks, and plenty of scandal. Passions ran high. Sound familiar?

In this election, despite the ugliness, the intimidation, and the attempt to disrupt, hundreds of thousands of Americans

will show up to man polling sites. Many millions more will show up and vote. It is our “powerfulest scene and show.”

Election Day, November, 1884

-Walt Whitman

If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest
         scene and show,
’Twould not be you, Niagara—nor you, ye limitless prairies—nor
         your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite—nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyser-
         loops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones—nor Huron’s belt of mighty lakes—
         nor Mississippi’s stream:
—This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now, I’d name— the
still small voice vibrating—America’s choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen—the act itself the main, the
         quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d—sea-board and inland
         —Texas to Maine—the Prairie States—Vermont, Virginia,
         California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West—the paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling—(a swordless conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern Napoleon’s:)
         the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity—welcoming the darker odds, the dross:
—Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to purify—while the
         heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.