A commenter to my previous posting remarked, "IMHO the 2024 election will decide if our country has completely lost its way or not."
A lot of people feel that way, though they come at it from different directions, and it's easy to see why. Me, not so much. Oh, these are fraught times in our politics, make no mistake -- but the United States has been fraughtled rather a lot over the years, everything from the acrimonious emergence of the first party system to the Civil War (and the messes leading up to it and trailing after), from Jackson and Wilson's sweeping changes to the Federal government, from the political fallout of the the Great Depression and the rise (in other countries) of modern authoritarianism* to the political turmoil of the 1960s. This is not a placid, serene place.
We do, however, manage to muddle through. That's why I don't believe in "Flight 93 elections." That's not how it works here. That's not how it has ever worked.
We have always been a country with deep suspicions about our government. Lacking any of the weight and gravitas of that "divine right of kings" stuff, we're even a bit skeptical about vox populi, vox Dei, and have laced it around with Bills of Rights, vetos, and checks and balances like the separation of powers. The film Network, with its cry of "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" tapped into a quintessentially American sentiment, one that resonated through the "Tea Party" movement, Occupy Wall Street and beyond. In 2016, Donald Trump grabbed a rich vein of it and rode it all the way to the White House.
But all of that emotion is just emotion. It rarely translates into substantive action and when it does, we don't always get what we thought we wanted -- and what we want, really, is to be heard and for the necessities of life to continue to be easily available. When a particular movement makes like a car-chasing dog that finally manages to catch one -- and has no use for it† -- we vote for a return to the norm.
The 2022 midterms were a prime example of that. Mr. Trump was (and remains) firmly focused on unmoored myths about his 2020 Presidential loss. Party primaries produced a broad range of candidates, especially for the Republicans, everything from old-time business-as-usual GOP wheelhorses to flamboyant Trumpists like Kari Lake. In the general election, the plain old Republicans did as well as usual, winning in solidly GOP areas, winning their share in "purple" places -- but the overwhelming majority of the GOP's "mad as hell" offerings lost, even in states where their party otherwise did well. When they won, it was by narrower margins than their more mainstream peers.
Anger with nothing more to offer wins headlines and can win an election, but it cannot keep on winning. If the only solution put forth is "throw the bums out," we already have a system that does just that. It's built right in. And it's still working fine. Oh, it's lumpy and bumpy and uneven; but it works. And as Winston Churchill observed, all of the alternatives work a whole lot worse if they work at all.
America is built on compromises and do-overs. We run 'em every couple of years, alternating between big, noisy Presidential contests and smaller midterms. If you don't like who or what you got this time, there's always next time. Anyone who tells you differently -- anyone who says, "Vote (for my guy) once and then stop voting," is an enemy to all Americans.
Yes, our way is sloppy and inefficient. We keep having to slap patches on the underlying structure -- but it works, it keeps on working, and it is built to let us keep on striving to do better.
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* I have recommended Hard Times by Studs Terkel in the past as a fair-minded, clear-eyed look at this time in our history and I will continue to do so: he got out there and listened to a wide variety of people who were in the thick of it, and shared their stories while not spinning ivory-tower theories of his own. It's modern history without any fancying-up.
† One of the more-isolated sites my employer maintains had a next-door neighbor with a pack of poorly-disciplined hunting dogs. The lane leading back to our stuff was very rough, limiting speeds to 20 mph or less. The dogs would chase our company vehicles, biting the tires and being spun away, over and over. While the dogs were in some danger of broken necks, they appeared to think it was a wonderful game. There's a lesson in that.
"fraughtled"?? I don't know whether you are coining a word or whether a Gremlin gave us a typo.
ReplyDelete"Irregardless" [sic], I don't understand why you do not have a side gig writing a syndicated op-ed column. I like your logic and style!
I wish I shared your optimism, but I still fear for our constitution. Idiots abound, on both sides.
ReplyDeleteCop Car, "fraughtled" is indeed a coining, by analogy with "throttled." "To be made fraught." As for my side gig writing op-eds, this is it. It doesn't pay well (or, in fact, at all) but the editor likes me.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous: I'm not so much optimistic as convinced of inertia.
Sensationalism sells, and Crisis Mode motivates people.
ReplyDeleteTrue since before the days the Maine went mysteriously kaboom.
I read Hard Times in a college history classes. Interesting stuff. Still have my copy around here. Didn't always agree with Studs, but his writing was worth reading.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with taking so many history classes (and reading so much history) (and, let's face it approaching if not actually at Senior Citizen status) is that I can't join in with all of the "cool" kids (on either side) screaming that this is the worst it's ever been in history OMG!!11!!
Example; Once you spent an O'Dark Thirty wake up watching Alert B-52's taxing for launch (June 80, when they almost did take off), hard to get excited by "We're X Months/years from the end of the world!".
Hard to get excited for same stuff, different tune, different day.
Randy--One just cannot trust those computer chips!
ReplyDelete"Fraughtled" is "a perfectly cromulent word".
ReplyDeleteRandyGC: makes staying awake during the O'Dark Thirty watch easier, brother. I didn't worry until I saw an E-7 sweating.
We have the one side screaming about stolen elections, the Deep State, and child grooming, and the other side ranting about about neo-Nazis, insurrectionists, and the scary orange guy. Neither side seems to care about the growing mass of disenfranchised keeping their heads down and trying to get through another year.
ReplyDeleteThe greatest danger is a population that doesn't participate because their basic needs aren't being met, and who see no use in getting involvede.
Antibubba, the problem with "bothsidserism" is that we *did* see an insurrection and we *do* have neo-Nazis, usually trying to wrap themselves in the Flag. "Scary orange guy" is as much symptom as disease. But the elections of 2020 and 2022 were demonstrably not stolen, the kind of "child grooming" Qanon and the far Right moan about isn't happening, and the "Deep State" as an active, organized force is a fantasy right up there with crazy notions about lizard people in secret control of everything.
ReplyDeleteSo the two sides aren't equal. Dark fantasy and dark reality don't carry the same weight.
As for an uninvolved population, the one good thing to come from the recent political messes is an increase in voter turnout. People are voting like it matters -- because it does.
Unfortunately, it appears that in many cases the voters are following the "dark side" of their favor and ignoring reality. Of course, the definition of "reality" is pretty much determined by the "dark side" in question.
ReplyDelete