60. Global Elections in 2024: The World is Voting

Unprecedented political shifts are on the horizon as nearly half of the world's population prepares to vote in 2024. We'll unravel the implications of these elections in 64 nations, including unexpected leadership shifts in places like Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. As we journey through this global electoral landscape, there’s a call to uphold principles of truth, justice, and community integrity, prioritizing collective well-being over individual desires. This episode challenges conventional electoral wisdom and urges listeners to reflect deeply on their civic duties. 

Are you ready for your vote?

#GlobalChange, #GlobalElections

Chapters

• 0:05 Global Elections and Seeking Truth
• 12:41 Police Reform and Challenges Ahead

Transcript

Grantley : 0:05

I'm Grant Le Martelli and this is Above the Noise, a podcast at the intersection of faith, race and reconciliation. Welcome back to Above the Noise. We've been off the air for a little bit of time, since I posted an episode, but we are back. I just want you to know we're not going anywhere. Above the Noise is not dead. We just took a pause to do some revisiting, some replanning big things that I've got that I want to do in the future and trying to work on those things. But thank you for those of you who have been continuing to listen and continue to download episodes, continuing to let your friends and family know about Above the Noise, and I thank you for your continued support. So, as we come to this year, the last part of the year, you know there are many things going on in the world around us today, and I want to talk a little bit about a couple of things that are on my mind, and elections obviously are on your mind if you're living in the United States, but even around the world, elections are on many people's mind.

Grantley : 1:13

In December of 2023, time Magazine came out with an article entitled the Ultimate Election Year All Elections Around the World in 2024. And they came up with this investigation that found that 64 countries were going to have elections in 2024. That is, 49% of the world's population are having or have had elections this year, and by July 1st of 2024, over 1 billion people had already voted in elections. And yet we still have the rest of the year to go. Countries like India, european Union, United States of America, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia Federation, Mexico, Iran, the United Kingdom, Algeria, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Ghana, North Korea, Taiwan, Mali, Sri Lanka, Romania, Senegal, Rwanda, Cambodia, Jordan, the Dominican Republic, South Sudan, and the list goes on and on and on. So this year is like election megaforce around the world and, as we have seen so far, many of the elections haven't turned out the way that people or the pundits predicted. Some countries have gone the opposite direction more conservative, some have gone more liberal, some have gone more protectionist, some are still trying to figure out where they're going to go and where the elections are going to be and basically what it tells me. People are saying we want change, we want to see things different, and they've had many motivations for that. I don't want to get into all of them because I don't know all of them, but the data is basically showing that many elections are not turning out the way that the pundits might have predicted, and some leaders of some of these countries were very surprised. We saw what happened in Bangladesh just recently, you know, where the prime minister was overthrown by popular resistance and had to leave the country, and that's just one stern example. We saw what happened in Great Britain, where the Conservative Party who was put out of power, who had been in power for a long time. So things are happening around the world, you know, and it is interesting.

Grantley : 3:43

I want to encourage you to not lose faith, not lose hope, but to take time and to think and to do research and to see what's going on around you and to make sure that, when it is your turn to vote, that you're voting with intelligence, you're voting out of principles of truth and justice and integrity and how to build stronger community. You know, I hear many people around us talking about you know that they want lower taxes and they want lower gas prices and lower grocery prices, they want interest rates to come down, and all of those things that I hear to me are selfish things. It's all about me, right? I want to have my life better, no matter what. I want to have my life better, no matter what. At the same time, I don't hear many of those people complaining about how great their stock portfolio is doing or how great their retirement plans are doing in this time either. I want to remind us that the means has to justify the ends. The means has to justify the ends.

Grantley : 4:46

I've come to this conclusion. For the person of faith, we just can't do anything we want to do and say whatever we want to say and say, as long as we get to where we want to go to. That's the important thing. Be what it may, for us, how we do things matters. How we get to the point where we want to go matters. How we treat people matters. What we say, what we do, what we post, who we follow matters, because even if we gain everything we want for ourselves and, at the same time, create chaos around us, we don't have peaceful communities, we don't have good neighborhoods, we're not loving our neighbors as ourselves, our schools are in chaos, our economies are in chaos, our people are afraid to live, we're treating others as though they don't matter. Then what's the sense of having all of these economic prosperities at the sacrifice of our community? Because what happens in those places where people are only concerned about building up themselves then they get to the point of a fortress mentality is now I've got all the things I want and those people around me don't have them, so I've got to protect it from them because I don't want them to get what I have. They get to the zero sum game and pretty soon people who were their friends, who were their families, who were their community, now become enemies because they have to protect all of these things that they're trying to get for themselves.

Grantley : 6:15

I'm reminded of a passage in the Bible in 1 Kings, chapter 22, when King Ahab got together with King Jehoshaphat and there was peace in the land, and somehow King Ahab decided he wanted to go to war to take back a piece of land. He wanted to disrupt the peace in order to go after something that he really didn't need. So he brought together his advisors, and there were 400 different advisors they call them prophets or advisors and these advisors were telling him everything he wanted to hear in unison. They were just stroking his ego, making him feel good yes, you should do this, yes, you should do that. So, like so many leaders today who just want to surround themselves with people who stroke their egos, who tell them what they want to hear, rather than tell them the truth, because sometimes the truth can be inconvenient and it doesn't always get us what we want.

Grantley : 7:13

So after a while of this, king Jehoshaphat, the other king, said to King Ahab isn't there another prophet? Isn't there another advisor? Isn't there somebody else who can give us a different opinion, who can tell us in his words what the Lord wants us to do, in other words, what's the right thing to do? See, sometimes we have to seek other opinions, we have to get other people in the room so that we get the true perspective. And King Ahab said yes, there's just one prophet, but I don't like him because he doesn't always tell me what I want to hear. He doesn't always give me the news I want. So King Jehoshaphat said let's get him anyhow and hear what he has to say.

Grantley : 7:51

So they brought in the prophet and as soon as the prophet comes in, the king looks at him and said are you going to tell me the truth or are you going to make something happen? The prophet said I will tell you the truth. And as soon as he began to tell the truth, the king got upset at him and said to Jehoshaphat you see, I told you he will never tell me what I wanted to hear, because the prophet said you can listen to those 400 people who are telling you what you want to hear, or you can hear the truth, which is, if you do this, you will lose. In fact, you will not only lose, you will lose your life. And he got so mad at the advisor for not telling him what he wanted to hear that he had him put in prison and said you will stay there until I get back. The challenge is he never got back there until I get back. The challenge is he never got back because, like the prophet said, you're being misled by these 400 advisors and the truth is that your plan was a bad plan and if you follow it, you're not going to make it.

Grantley : 8:50

So sometimes the truth can be inconvenient. It may not be what we want to hear, it may not be appropriate at the time. Sometimes we want to surround ourselves with people who are just like us, who say the same things we want to say, do the same things we want to do all the time, and it makes us feel as though we're on the right path, we're doing the right thing. The truth of the matter is you could be going down the road with 400 people in the wrong direction, for the wrong reason, for the wrong result, all of them telling you that you're going to be right until it is finally not so. Or we can accept the inconvenience of hearing the truth, finding out the truth and changing our direction and doing the right thing from the very beginning.

Grantley : 9:36

And I'm not saying that every time in elections everything is always right, that sometimes we got to choose between people who are not not always the most stellar people around, but you've got some, some. Like some people say, you got to choose between the lesser of two evils. But we look at thing to me of principles of truth and justice and equity and belonging and loving one another, building strong communities. If we have leaders who are not calling us towards being stronger, better together, then we have to look at are we following the crowd or what decisions are we going to make? So I want to encourage you in the United States and in the other countries around the world who have not had your elections yet, as time is coming up, go through and see, listen, find out the new things. Get second opinion, get a third opinion and learn before you go and vote and ask God to give you the right direction. Ask him to give you wisdom in making the right choice, because, yes, we have a responsibility to vote and, yes, we have a responsibility to be good leaders in our community. But I would want you to stay away from those people who are just spreading rubbish and garbage online and posting negative things and calling people's names and making all of these caricatures that are just not doing anything to advance the global discourse, the political discourse of how we become better people, how we become better countries, how we become better believers, how we show light to each other, how we live in community with each other. And I'm sure that if you take the time to do those things, that you will make the right choice when it comes your time to vote. And don't say that you're not going to vote because it's too hard. Do the homework. Life is not supposed to be easy. Do the homework, do the hard thing and gather information and make sure that you exercise your right and your responsibility to vote. Vote for peace, vote for truth, vote for justice, vote for equity, vote for good community, not only the things that selfishly benefit us.

Grantley : 12:02

So where are we going with Above the Noise? Above the Noise is changing. I'm trying to build it up stronger. I'm trying to build a podcast stronger. I'm trying to build a podcast community where we can have better conversations, where we can have more guests, expand our reach. We're going to be going to YouTube as well. We're going to be adding video to our podcast and using that medium. That's what I've been working on Going to have a new logo and a new setup, and I thank you for your support. So be patient with us and continue listening, but in the meantime, we will continue to post our audio episodes.

Grantley : 12:41

And our next episode is a really interesting episode. I want to prime it. I'm going to be talking with Chief Padilla from the Kent Washington Police Department. Chief was with us four years ago in the middle of COVID, in the middle of the George Floyd and the racial awakening, in the middle of the defund, the police and the protests and all of these things that happened, that were going on. And now we're here, four years later, and we're going to talk about how things have changed, how they've come to that. What are some of the challenges facing us? Facing the city facing the country right now.

Grantley : 13:16

It's just going to be a really great episode and I want to encourage you to look for that here in the next week or two and after that we will continue to post. If you know anyone, if you have any friends who you think would be a good guest on our show, send me an email at abovethenoise24, abovethenoise24 at gmailcom and let me know and introduce me and we can have a conversation and see if I agree to make a good guest. If you would like to be a guest, also send me an information and we can do that. But remember to like us on Facebook, like us on Instagram, tell your friends and family, share the episodes, and I'm excited about our new season and our new time. Thank you for your support.