My wife Laura and I had an eventful weekend, but it left me disappointed in some of my fellow Americans. Saturday, we had a city council runoff election and voted near closing time. I thought there must be great turnout, since I had to park a block away from the rec center. But I quickly discovered the big crowd was there for a graduation party. The only other people in the gym where voting took place were the poll workers. The machine said my ballot was the 30^th cast that day. That’s for an at-large council seat in a city with a population of over 196,000. Couldn’t some of those people who were in the building anyway at least have bothered to vote?

Well, I hope they like the person that a handful of other voters chose for them. The incumbent who had by far the most votes in the general election just got replaced by a challenger who beat him by 66 votes.

The next day, we attended a patriotic, moving and educational Flag Day ceremony at the Fort Worth Elks Lodge, where Laura beautifully sang the National Anthem. Even though there was a free lunch afterward, at least half the seats were empty. Parents should have brought their kids to hear this, because God knows, they’re not learning it in schools that teach them the flag stands for oppression instead of freedom and is something that it’s okay to disrespect. It was upsetting for me to hear the stories of all the flags that had been carried into battle by American heroes who gave their lives to secure our rights, like the right to vote, when I was thinking of how so many people not only didn’t care enough to show up and honor the flag, they don’t even care enough to vote.

You can complain all you like about the current misleadership, and even blame it on cheating, but it’s said that you can only steal an election when the vote is within the margin of fraud. The fact is that Joe Biden is in the White House because in a handful of swing states, he won by a virtual handful of votes. If the Republican turnout wasn’t 100%, then every Republican who didn’t vote might as well have voted for Biden.

Likewise, why is the Senate controlled by an odious troll like Chuck Schumer? Because in states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, GOP turnout lagged. In Georgia, the drop-off in GOP voters from the general election to the runoff was far greater than Warnock’s margin of victory. Maybe the Republican candidate wasn’t their ideal choice, but did Republicans who didn't vote really want a radical like Warnock, an invalid like Fetterman, and the Senate agenda under the control of Schumer? I hope the couch was extra comfy on election day to make it all worth it.