I think many of us are still focused on the election results and what it all means going forward as a nation, and I am no exception. Try as I might to put it out of my mind, it keeps coming back like a boomerang. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past couple of days/nights, and I thought I’d share just a few of my thoughts with you.
There is much reason to be relieved by the results of Tuesday’s election, but … I would urge caution – it was not a sweeping mandate. Republicans had more to do with their own losses than Democrats did with their wins. They pandered to Trump, let him choose the candidates, and as usual Trump chose poorly. Trump’s criteria was two-fold: to earn his support, the candidate had to pretend to believe the 2020 election was ‘stolen’ from Trump, and the candidate had to swear an oath of loyalty to Trump … not to the Republican Party, not to the country, but to one single ‘man’, Donald Trump. Even a number of Republicans were, as is now obvious, offput by the unqualified candidates Trump chose to support and it was that, more than anything else, that drove some of the Republican losses this week. The Supreme Court also played a role, unwittingly, in the unexpected Democratic wins with their decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization. People care about their rights. It would behoove our politicians and our Supreme Court Justices to keep that in mind. The government exists to serve the people, not the other way around.
Republicans seem to have forgotten the actual purpose of government’s existence. As Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, government is to be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” … the operative word here being ‘people’. All people. Democrats’ policies are primarily people-centric, while Republicans seem more interested in making the nation wealthy, but only for a few at the expense of the rest of us. While I won’t go so far as to say that nobody should have more than another person, I will say that I find anyone who has millions or billions of dollars to his name to be obscenely, grotesquely uncaring about humanity. Sure, if you work hard, you make your company successful, you should reap the rewards, but not to the point of having billions of dollars while other people in your country, your own city, are going to bed hungry at night. THAT is simply inexcusable. And yet, that is what the Republican Party stands for.
I have heard it said that there is no real danger of an autocracy taking over in the U.S., for we have the Constitution. Folks, the Constitution is a document, and like any document, it is only as good as the people who are in charge of upholding it. A document can be destroyed, can be altered, can be burned. It is a concept, a foundation upon which we build, but it is not indestructible. It relies on the people we elect to defend and uphold it, and … AND it relies on We the People to agree to honour it by ensuring those we elect to support the Constitution, actually do so. I wonder how many voters in this country have actually read the U.S. Constitution? It’s only just over 8,000 words, including the 27 amendments, just about the length of 8 of my blog posts. And the language is simple enough for anyone who can read at a 9th grade level to understand.
The document was intended to grow along with the nation, not to be a set-in-stone, unwavering set of laws. The framers knew that times would change, situations would evolve that might require additions or alterations, and they fully expected those additions and alterations, expected the document to grow with the times. And to an extent, it has. Women were given the right to vote in the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, just barely over a century ago. It was the 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, that gave 18-year-old citizens the right to vote – this came about largely due to the war in Vietnam and the case was made that if an 18-year-old was old enough to risk their life for their country, they should have a voice in our government. The last amendment passed was the 27th, in 1992, that disallows members of Congress from granting themselves pay raises that would take effect prior to the next election. 1992 … 30 years since the last amendment to the Constitution. A lot has changed in that time, and the document is sorely in need of some updating, but back to the point … it could be destroyed without too much ado. It is a safeguard, but … just as your home is your safeguard against the elements, wild animals and wild people, your home can be broken into, burned down … destroyed. So can the Constitution. So can democracy.