COMMENTARY:
I’m proud that enough regular folks responded to an unusually bad presidential administration and voted to weaken its power to do crazy and vicious things.
One could feel it swelling, a wave of revulsion among even people ideologically aligned with Trumpists. It was helped along by exceptionally fine Democratic candidates, such as Mr. Talarico and Mr. El-Sayed, thoughtful, articulate people of character; and by Mr. Trump’s forcing on Republicans poor candidates, includig scandal-plagued Ken Paxton (over familiar Senator John Cornyn) and nothingburger Darline Graham. Demanding personal loyalty may get you a cabinet of yes-men, but doesn’t guarantee competence or character.
However, our nation remains in trouble, in more ways than we usually realize. We’re like an aging person with a weak heart, a recent cancer diagnosis, and diabetes who got drunk, fell into the street, avoided getting run over solely by blind luck, and somehow got back on our feet and are stumbling along the sidewalk.
We still have the devastating economic inequality in which a few people have untold wealth, but life is harder than it should be for middle-class citizens, and without national healthcare. Trump’s corruption, unnecessary war, and tariffs play a role, but the problem is deeper and persistent. Although Republicans blame welfare cheats and immigrants, it’s systemic. People are dissatisfied by it, even if politicians can con them into misreading its source.
Go back to basics: our founders loathed empires, not only because they harmed other peoples but because they got so intent on protecting what they had that they spent money not on productive pursuits but on weapons, and because leaders tended to grow corrupt. About 125 years ago, our nation got tempted to become an empire, and we have what our founders feared.
George Washington loathed political parties. We now have a nation largely run by two huge parties, each more interested in its success than in the nation’s. Each owes too much to the mega-wealthy and corporate interests for whom personal profit is more important than general prosperity. One view of Tuesday’s great events is that we traded one for the other, somewhat.
We are also no further along in correcting our blissful disregard for our environment and the diminishing number of wonderful species that share it with us. Although wild things were long more plentiful than we, around 1850 the total mass of wild creatures equaled the total mass of humans and peoples’ cows, pigs, horses, and oxen. Now? It’s 95 to 5. But for birds, most U.S. citizens likely don’t see even one wild creature in the average weak. I recently learned that someone wrote a beautiful fable, The Case of the Animals, in which the various creatures indicted Homo Sapiens and reasonably explained how we were destroying them over time. That was written in the 12th Century in Arabic. Have we learned anything since? But our leader thinks global climate madness is a Democratic or Chinese hoax. The industry folks who bankroll him want us to think so too.
The startling depth and range of U.S. voters’ disgust --- with Mississippi’s Senate race still knotted – delights and impresses me. (Vance is digging out after the flood, trying to rebuild his career by saying “It’s just the war!”)
But we the people are climbing a tall mountain. Yeah, we climbed hard just now, and the view from here is sublime. But we ain’t yet near that beautiful snow up there.
Peter Goodman's opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of KRWG Public Media or NMSU.