I had therapy today for the first time in two weeks. For the most part I reported progress I made. That can make blogging more difficult. I’m working on not calling people idiots; that’s like quitting smoking in tobacco shop. I can still call myself an idiot, I often do. Do I have any idiot stories to tell? I momentarily forgot what a difference quotient was. That means nothing to most of you but it’s an important math concept that one of my friends used in a Facebook post. This was a glitch, I mislocated the address where it’s stored in my memory. I repaired the software.
The election isn’t called by ABC or AP but I’m confident that Biden won. This was always a likely scenario, once Biden didn’t carry Florida it was going to take a few days to count all the votes. It was a given that he’d be behind before the absentee ballots were counted. He didn’t come from behind; they just didn’t count the votes he had in the bank until later in the process. When I started playing bridge we’d tally up the results by hand on a blackboard. Everybody played all the hands before we started counting but we’d get the results one hand at a time as we looked at the score slips and did the math. If we gave totals as we went along it might give the illusion of coming from behind, but it would be just that an illusion. The election works the same way.
The election was still a disappointment as the Dems lost ground in the house and didn’t take the senate. If they win both runoffs in Georgia they could tie, and the VP would break the tie. Take a deep breath. Celebrate what we’ve won, and then get to work on those special elections. They are hugely important.
Even if we win those two seats, even if we gain more in the midterm election, American democracy has a huge problem. Things are so polarized that we can’t get things that most people want done. Politics has become much more about defeating the enemy, than about policy. When everything is an existential crisis, existential crises can’t be addressed. We see political opponents as an enemy to be crushed, not people to be persuaded. Don’t say they can’t be, look at same-sex marriage; it has gone from something that was an anathema to something a large majority favor. In the sixties most people were against mixed marriages. We didn’t crush the opposition, we co-opted them. Hell, we did that largely under presidents that were weak or even hostile to civil rights, Nixon and Reagan. People change. The way I like to put it is that people are not the enemy they are the battlefield. Lasting political victories come not from outmaneuvering the opposition, but by getting most people on your side. People are small c conservative, they don’t change swiftly, but they change.
I’m not going celebrate Biden’s win. I’m going to be joyful. We should all party, even if it’s done socially distantly. But we should be good winners. It makes no difference if Trump supporters wouldn’t be. Isn’t the entire point of the election that we have different values? Isn’t that why there is all the animosity? I do not want to emulate them. I’m going to listen to Abraham Lincoln. These words are oddly relevant seven score and fifteen years later.
“Fellow countrymen: at this second appearing to take the oath of the presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends is as well known to the public as to myself and it is I trust reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
“On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it ~ all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place devoted altogether to saving the Union without war insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war ~ seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves not distributed generally over the union but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen perpetuate and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered ~ that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses for it must needs be that offenses come but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which in the providence of God must needs come but which having continued through His appointed time He now wills to remove and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him. Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
“With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address
Wise Madness 