WELLMAN: Our children deserve better

Published 10:00 am Saturday, January 30, 2021

There is virtually no one in life who hasn’t suffered a defeat. Whether it was losing at a board game while playing with family, to organized sports growing up, to the tougher and more real defeats that come with simply trying to get by in our day-to-day lives. 

If we had good role models and mentors growing up, we were taught that defeat exists. We are also taught that defeat isn’t something to wallow in. It is something that, when experienced, must be learned from and met with resolve to try again and do better. To get back up when you have fallen down. 

However, the events surrounding our most recent election have now culminated in the tragedy that occurred when thousands of rioters stormed the United States Capitol. It will be an historical shame in our country’s history. The entire situation has been created by hundreds of elected officials stoking the flames of divisions with denial and outright lies about the outcome of truly free and fair election. They have done so simply because they have lost. The people living in this denial are not strangers in some far off place that we simply watch on the news or social media. One is right here in our backyard; Rep. Rick Williams. 

Rep. Williams, in a Facebook post from Nov. 30, stated that, “something clearly went wrong.” If it is so clear that it went wrong the evidence should be clear all the same. However, Rep. Williams, like the hundreds of other Republican lawyers who have been fighting the outcome, have not a single piece of evidence to back up their claims. They don’t have the evidence because they are lying. Simple as that. There was no fraud, if there was we would have found it. 

Rep. Williams has joined a chorus of sycophants who choose not to live in reality. What is so strange about Rep. Williams baseless, unfounded and deceptive accusations is that his name was on the same ballots in which he cries foul. Yet, Rep. Williams will not ever say that his own 10% win was compromised. His electoral victory can stand, that was legitimate, it was just all the other races in which Republicans lost is where he sees that, “something clearly went wrong.” 

This is not the attitude or actions of a leader. This is not how someone should conduct themselves when they have been elected to represent all of us that live in district 145. If Rep. Williams allows himself to deny reality on this issue than how can we trust him to seriously address any of the other very real issues facing our community? How can we ever expect our local economy to grow and thrive, our schools to ever improve or our crumbling infrastructure to ever be fixed, if he has proven himself to be the type of person to outright deny reality. 

This isn’t just a failure of leadership on his part, this is a complete lack of it. Our children are watching. They are seeing the example our leaders are setting. And the power of that example, the lesson Rep. Williams is teaching them, is that you don’t have to deal with defeat. You can just lie your way out of it. 

He has chosen to be disgracefully irresponsible and reckless, perpetuating a fantasy, in the face of one of the greatest challenges currently facing our country. He has chosen to divide us, not to an end that leads to the betterment of our community, but simply for the adoration of an idol who cares nothing about the place we all call home. 

We deserve better than Rick Williams. Our children deserve better. 

Byron Wellman

Eatonton