Countdown

Friends,

Countdowns can be exciting, but it all depends what we can expect at the end of the 3-2-1 of our midterm elections that are now a month away. I do know that we are facing a strange and perhaps epochal historical moment for our nation. Strange because anticipation of the midterms seems as haunting as a Halloween ghost.  To be a bit melodramatic, the very future of democracy and the sanity of a nation can seem unsettlingly dependent on the outcome.  

But part of me also doesn’t dare take the outcome of the midterms too seriously. I tend to refuse to believe it holds the weight it perhaps actually does. And yet, of course, the reality is that, even if the democrats secure Congress with an unchallenged and peaceful outcome, the midterms are only an incremental first step in the very long process of addressing, not only the harm of the Trump administration, but of redressing the now-years of the failure of our government to assume effective responsibility for critical challenges to the worst of capitalism, to demand accountability and restraint from the Pentagon, to respect the rights and needs of our most vulnerable, and to protect our environment, among other pressing issues.

I am bored and distrustful of all the polls and pundits who try so hard to look confident, sagacious  and reasonable as they sway me back and forth with my often wishful and perhaps naive hopes as well as my fears. I want their prognostications to assure me we are a better people than any negative results on the tally board, that democracy is such a remarkable and worthy form of government that it will be preserved, even if it is so often maddeningly frustrating. 

But I still have to say I am understandably wary about the outcome of the elections, although I don’t want to be fearful. To help me, and perhaps some of you, I want to write a bit about my fears to help me better understand the basis of my concerns. And then I want to say something about my hopes.

My first fear is that the election will allow the president and his associates to once again conclude that he has been given unaccountable, unilateral control over the government of the United States, the so-called unitary executive theory, which asserts that the president controls the entire executive branch of government and anything else he apparently wants to try to make happen without accountability. If we are to be a law-abiding, democratic nation we cannot tolerate further immoral, illegal, unaccountable, and ego-driven directives ordered simply at the president's behest - the hallmark of a dictatorship and autocracy. We need to know this will not continue to be tolerated.

But what I fear even more is that as a result of disappointing election results the American people will further loose faith in democracy and trend toward Trump’s apparent goal that we become an autocracy. If there is any question about the importance of our voting we need to be reminded that functional check-and-balance governmental process is always complex, but  when based in representative democracy it is one of the great advances of human governance. The right to vote, to assert agency over those who represent us and to have a say in legislative and financial policy, is actually quite a sacred right, especially as opposed to the alternative. I fear that if we no longer honor and use the power democracy provides us, we will no longer have faith in our ability to create our nation’s humane present and future welfare. If the midterms do not significantly signal the resolute strength of democracy, we will either begin to accept and normalize its failure or perhaps, on the positive side, we will be sufficiently warned about what autocracy looks like we will double down on reinforcing what we already have in our democratic system.

And now here is my hope. History has shown that, although difficult, we can reverse the disparities of income, establish policies to protect the environment, and give preference for our nation’s social welfare over the prerogatives of capitalism's powerful incentives for wealth accumulation. We can demand a government whose policies give preference always for the common good, and especially the care for the most vulnerable among us. I specifically reference the momentous success of the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, our environmental and land protection policies, and our progress in overcoming long-time racial and minority discrimination. We must stop the erosion of the progress we have achieved and again claim what we have gained, and continue to make progress because we have done so in the past. The midterm elections will hopefully point us in this direction.

In spite of our most fervent hopes, as noted above, we cannot really know what to expect from the midterm elections. I have concluded, however, that I dare to be hopeful for at least a shift to the democratic control of Congress.  And my further hope is that, whether locally or nationally, we will be given an incentive to develop concerted visionary plans for a more just and peaceful country, supported by a strong majority of the American people who have become sufficiently aware of the frightening possibility that we can lose our democracy. And I hope the aftermath will begin to restore a trust that we can ultimately create a national unity and equity that will allow us to believe in a tenable future for our nation. 

The first step we need to take, of course, is for each of us to vote, and during the next month to 
encourage as many others as possible to do the same. So... "3-2-1...VOTE."

Peace,
Tom