Marj-at-Large: News &Views
  • News & Views
    • About the Author
  • Right Now
  • My Take
    • Bright Spots >
      • Where Has All the Kindness Gone?
      • A New Day on the Way: Jan. 3, 2019
      • Blessed Are the Peacemakers
      • The Audacity of Hope
      • Issues >
        • Budget and Taxes
        • The Environment
        • Guns
        • Health Care >
          • Statistics
      • The Purity of It All: LLWS
      • The Polling Place Adventure
      • July Potpourri
      • The Unexpected Bison
    • State of the Union >
      • 12/5/18: The Best of Days, the Worst of Days
      • 7/17/18: Deals With Dictators, Episode 2
      • 5/17/18: Suffer the Children
      • 4/7/18: Never Let a Crisis Go To Waste
      • 12/6/17: The Centre Cannot Hold
    • Saving the Children and Other Living Things >
      • Saving the Elephants
    • Taxes, Broadly Speaking
    • Health Care
    • Presidential Malpractice >
      • 6/22/18: Gratuitous Brutality
    • The Political Parties >
      • 2/2/18: GOP: The Cabinet Chorus of Praise
  • Marj-inized
  • Readers Write
    • Your Turn

A Country Adrift

9/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Note: I wrote the piece that follows more than a month ago, but it disappeared into the deep, dark files of my computer. I discovered it when I sat down to write about more current events: the Afghanistan withdrawal, the climate catastrophe, Supreme Court cowardice, the willingness of governors to risk school kids’ lives, the Wild West (i.e., Texas)… and whatever else makes this moment feel like Armageddon. Unfortunately writing about all that might take a year and a day (well, maybe not), so I decided in the interim, I’d run the following piece. Maybe, by now, it will all seem tame.

​​As time wears on, so do I. “Wears on,” a vague expression, implies that time passes tediously. Typically, we don’t say that a person “wears on,” but right now, I feel that’s what I’m doing. Living in a country half crazed and half sane is exhausting. So much makes no sense.
 
We profess to believe in equality, yet as of July 14th, 18 of our states had passed 30 laws making it more difficult for constituents to cast ballots. Mail-in and early voting are more difficult; voter ID requirements, more stringent; voter purges, more likely. In all, more than 400 bills to restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states. 
 
By the time you read this, there will surely be more, all brought to us by the Republicans, who are so unable to develop voter friendly policies that they failed to create a platform for the 2020 campaign, apparently having decided they couldn’t win on the merits and erroneously believing their presidential candidate was too big to fail. Turns out he was just too big.
 
Then there’s the recount charade in Arizona, carried out by the playful sounding Cyber Ninjas (a group that has not been legally certified to do that kind of work)  and apparently financed by an assortment of pro-Trump sources ranging from the Arizona Republican party to L. Lin Wood, identified as a “QAnon-promoting attorney.” 
 
At least the attempts to undermine free and fair elections, while despicable, make sense in their own despicable way. There is the whisper of logical thought: If you can’t win by appealing to the voters, try to win by keeping the ones you don’t like from voting in the first place.
 
What makes no sense … what gives rise to rumination in the middle of the night … what defies all reason … is the conflation of health and politics. 
 
Refusing the Covid vaccine is like marching off to a war without a cause. How do people not understand that? The specter of death seems to be no deterrent.
 
We have a certain amount of craziness built into our system …
  • An electoral college that makes it possible for the presidential candidate with the fewest votes to “win”
  • Senate rules that make it possible for a minority of the members to block legislation favored by the majority
  • A Supreme Court whose members are appointed for life in a willy-nilly fashion: the luck of the draw, so to speak, by whoever happens to be president when a justice dies or resigns—unless, of course, one person, the majority leader of the senate, elected by the voters of one state, chooses to block the appointees confirmation
 
Now, one of our political parties is determined to make life even crazier--and not in a good way.
​

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Thoughts for Our Time

    “Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.”
    ~Benjamin Disraeli

    Archives

    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017

    Categories

    All
    Candidates
    Civility Or Lack Thereof
    Civil Rights
    Congress
    Constitution
    Elections
    Guns
    Immigration
    Justice System
    Privacy Issues
    Reflections
    Reproductive Rights
    Satire
    Taxes
    The Economy
    The Political Parties
    The Press
    Trump

    RSS Feed

Copyright © 2017