In the novels and TV series The Expanse, spacecraft mechanic Amos Burton makes many references to "the churn," a period of time when everything is in flux before it settles into a new normal. There's even a novella in the book series and an episode, part of a narrative arc, in the TV series with that title.
It's an inflection point, a place where the slope of the curve changes.*
It's where the United States is now. Up or down? Authoritarianism or our imperfect-but-striving republic? War or diplomacy, guns or grain?
This is not one man's decision, no matter how much the figurehead who's tried so hard to nail himself to the prow of the ship of state may smirk and preen, no matter how much his enablers, handlers and flacks claim otherwise. We're coming up on critical midterm elections, and it's a time for choosing.
What do you want? More imperial presidency, and not just from one man or one party, but a growing trend like the one that twisted ancient Rome? Or back to the brawling, boisterous and, yes, flawed tripod of American Constitutional government, with a noisy, arguing Congress, an overworked Executive bound by law and a court system that is not open to the highest bidder?
Our country prospered under the system we put in place 237 years ago. We'd gotten ourselves well shut of kings, and we needed something that was almost unheard of at the time, a system suited to growing cities, the sparks of industrial production, hard-headed farmers and romantic pioneers. It was never perfect but the general trend was to make it more accessible, more evenhanded, less corrupt, more free. It shouldn't be given up without a fight.
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* Strictly speaking, it's where the curve reverses, but the metaphoric use is considerably looser than the mathematical one.
Update
1 year ago
3 comments:
What do I want? I want the orange man out and all his disciples removed from any power whatsoever . . . and I want our republic back ASAP. I'm not sure we can pull this off, however.
I am just bad enough to enjoy the delicious irony of the results of the special election for a congressional seat in Florida.
Decades ago, I read a book that told us all that we were sweating the small stuff - that national elections were unimportant because we are much more effected by local and state elections. The author (I no longer recall title of book or author) was wrong. Look at the mess our federal government has put us all in, now. We are surely feeling it.
I suspect that 2020 will be the date future historians will set as the starting point for the current chaos. The mix of deliberately addictive electronic media, the craziness of an elections year, a major civil rights event, and of course the pandemic caused a whole lot of people to lose their minds.
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