Now We Have a Chance

The midterm results give our nation and our species a chance. The Dems will take control of Congress—both the Senate and the House—in January. The long, painful reign of public insults, mindless cruelty, open grifting and simple idiocy will start to wind up. In two months, we will have small-d democrats and thinking men and women in charge of a single one of our three branches.

It’s time to heave a sigh of relief. Had the midterms gone the other way, we would have surely lost our Republic during the next two years. We might even have faced species extinction, whether from a rampant pandemic (with “response” by RFK, Jr.), or from a commander-in-chief clearly suffering advancing senile dementia with his fingers too close to the Button.

As it is, our nation’s precipitous decline from the world’s premiere manufacturing center is still on track. AI is not manufacturing, although Nvidia’s advanced chip-making surely is. AI is a service involving software and business, a way of making huge profits without actually making anything. At the moment, it’s showing every sign of becoming a massive bubble of heedless overinvestment.

The margins in some races were a bit close for comfort. As of this writing, Abdul El-Sayed was winning his race for senator from Michigan by a margin of just over seven percent, albeit still climbing slowly. James Talarico’s margin in Texas was nearly twice as great. Both are superbly qualified candidates and superb debaters; both are honorable men of faith with a clear calling to serve their constituents, not themselves.

El-Sayed, in particular, gave up a potentially lucrative doctor’s career shortly after earning his M.D. degree. Why? Because his hospital had refused to sequester and treat a female drug addict clearly in need of supervised drying out, and he later saw her sprawled out sleeping on a subway. Instead, El-Sayed launched a career in public health with a life’s goal of making sure that every person has access to health care according to need, not income.

El-Sayed and Talarico both support health care for all, but I think the fire burns brighter in El-Sayed’s belly. It’s hard not to see the difference in their margins as reflecting the popularity of Christianity versus the suspicion and fear of Islam, deliberately inflamed by the Party of Chaos, aka Republicans. The good news is that now more American Muslims will feel more like real citizens and be more eager to participate in improving the nation to which many immigrated to escape unspeakable conditions abroad.

Anyway, let’s not quibble. We won. Common sense won. Decency won. Straight thinking won.

If we can survive the next two lame-duck months intact, we will have a government working as our Founders intended. Among its first orders of business should be passing comprehensive anti-grifting legislation and expanding the Supreme Court to neuter the likes of Justices Roberts, Alito and Thomas. They’ve already done enough damage to the structure, functioning and public spirit of our government—not to mention common sense—to last a century.

We still have to get through the next two months, and the next two years with a rogue and increasingly demented president. Will at least some of his feckless enablers at last see the light and do their civic duty? Will the pointless, aimless war in Iran expand into World War III? Will it go nuclear? Will Bibi somehow take control of Israel again, and will his religious-fanatic followers turn it into a Jewish mirror image of Iran’s corrupt Islamic theocracy? Will Europe, the US, Japan and South Korea and maybe even China unite at last to stop Putin’s creeping conquest of Eurasia, financed by deep immiseration of Russa’s people?

Our nation and our species are hardly out of the woods yet. Far from it. But we Americans have taken a vital first step toward preserving our Republic and righting the insane rush toward authoritarian government that motivated Project 2025. An “energetic executive” indeed! (Roberts’ oft-repeated words in his utterly lawless opinion in Trump v. United States.)

Those of us who believe can thank God, Allah, or Yahveh for deliverance. Those of us who are rationalists and realists can be happy for the first, essential step down a long, painful and uncertain road toward national healing and reformation.