A Revolution Every Two Years?

Thomas Jefferson is said to have claimed that a revolution would be a good idea every 10 years.  Jefferson’s detractors thought he was talking about the beheadings which took place during the French Revolution.  Jefferson’s enemies claim that he wanted to bring the guillotine to the shores of the United States.  Given that our Founding Father had rewritten the Bible to remove divinity from Jesus, had children with an enslaved woman, claimed that Washington was senile and that Adams was in the pay of the British, it is not shocking that Jefferson might have meant what he said about revolution.

However, the times have changed.  Now we have a revolution every two years.  We do not have a literal guillotine, but we have the power of Congress to pardon, indict, investigate, and cause endless aggravation while doing nothing to govern the country any better.

The avalanche, tsunami, or however one wants to describe the Democratic win in this election is without doubt a kind of revolution.  A Republican United States became Democratic overnight as a result of the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression which had taken hold by the time of the 1932 elections.

Perhaps the most important statistic which was shared with the public from exit polling was that the overwhelming majority of people voted for Democrats because of the price of gasoline, diesel fuel, and everyday necessities.  The smallest percentage of people, something like 4%, said their vote had anything to do with foreign policy, Iran, or Israel.  No one was asked if their votes, pro or con, had anything to do with Jews, Muslims, or some other mistrusted group.

There is no question, however, that the two-year swing of the grandfather clock’s pendulum has been accelerated due to social media, the immediate impact on prices of governmental decisions, and the general disregard in which the public hold politicians.  Most people who voted held their noses and did so because they were ticked off.

Plenty of ink has been spilled about the anti-Trump sentiment in this country.  The President himself asked people to vote as though he was on the ballot.  “If you like me, vote for Republicans, and if you do not like the job I have been doing, vote for the Democrats.”  People heard the President, and they voted accordingly.

There is no question that tyrants and despots around the world, especially terrorists in the Middle East, are celebrating jubilantly.   Let us remember that while the United States now has one Muslim in the Senate, the only democracy in the Middle East has 19.  That is Israel.  There is a message in the Israel vote that is also a message for the United States.  What is it those Arabs in the Knesset want?  If they are to be believed, they say that what they want is better police protection in Arab towns and villages.  The most significant violence that Arabs in Israel face are Arabs killing Arabs.  Much of it is organized crime.  If the Israeli government could address the very basic need for Arabs to be safe from Arabs, the new government would have a major win on its hands.

Voters can be charmed by a demagogue for only so long.  The Germans in World War II, the Russians, and almost all of the Third World, including the Arab nations today, have no history of democracy, fair elections, or any reasonable way to express their dissatisfaction with their governments.  The people in those countries are slaves to regimes that enrich themselves off the backs of their suffering citizens.  Not so in most of Europe, parts of Latin America, and all of the United States.  In the frail democracies of the West, citizens express their outrage by voting the party out of office.  That is precisely what has occurred in the United States.

Will the Democrats be smart enough to use their election wins to improve the lot of hard-working Americans?  Will they end corruption in the big cities?  Will the newly elected Democrats focus on retribution, investigations, and political appointments or will they address the $40 trillion national deficit which threatens to be the ruination of our country’s future?  And if Democrats and Republicans are smart enough to address the nation’s most serious problems such as the deficit, healthcare, an overly complex tax system, and other bread and butter issues, will they do so in a way that punishes one group of Americans and enriches another?

So far in the last 25 years both parties have done a marvelous job at avoidance.  They spend more time beating up one another, at taxpayer expense, than governing in any reasonable way.  A lobbyist once told me that 50% of elected politicians stick their finger up in the air to see which way the wind is blowing.  They vote accordingly.  That is why there have been no changes to improve the future viability of Medicare.  He then said that 25% of politicians are totally corrupt, and they simply need to be voted out of office.  He claimed that the final 25% do not know how to do evil.  However, 25% is not majority, and they typically can get little done.

Are we hopelessly bound to fail as a nation like the Roman Empire and other great civilizations that fell apart due to the weight of their own unanswered problems?  Perhaps.  However, any time one party sweeps the elections, it is an opportunity for introspection and even to reach out to the losers in order to see if a better America could be fashioned out of the wreckage of the last election.

There are always some good people holding office, that 25%, who do not know how to do harm.  The real problem is whether they can whip up enough voter sentiment to effectuate any fair, reasonable, and acceptable changes.

Much has been written as to how to address the deficit, control prices, and solve the healthcare embroglio.  We do not necessarily need any new, outlandish, or extreme solutions.  What we do need to do is to look at the way these problems have been addressed over the last quarter of a century and to have some legitimate leadership on both sides of the aisle, willing to cobble together practical solutions.

If it sounds like a pipe dream, it probably is.  Nevertheless, every 100 years or so people of principle come together to address problems.  Whether that will happen currently is anyone’s guess.  We can only hope and pray for an America which takes itself seriously and whose population insists that their elective representatives behave with the acumen, integrity, and dispatch required of free people in a free society.