Dear Peter —
Who’d ever have thought there’d be such rejoicing in the State of Vermont over a massive Democratic electoral win? I guess the good old thoroughgoing Republican days are solidly behind us – at least for now. I presume that you and your colleagues are issuing great sighs of relief, and perhaps even tossing Frisbees back and forth in the hallowed halls of the Capitol. I would be, if I were there.
But there’s a lame-duck interim now upon us, during which the barely imaginable may happen. President Trump seems to be emerging from his shock at the results of the election, if not from his fantasy that they had nothing to do with him. He’s elevated to his right hand Stephen Miller, one of the architects of his most onerous actions. Given his susceptibility to advice, this can’t be a good sign.
Before we go any farther, I should mention my prep school cross-country team’s coach, an utterly unflappable ex-naval officer who served in the South Pacific during the Second World War. He never gave pep talks or predicted certain wins in interscholastic meets. Now and then he quietly issued advice. Our team was pretty good, and I don’t recall that we ever lost. The advice he gave us one day before another fairly certain win has stuck with me for 75 years. “We’ve all heard since we were very small,” he said, “that it’s hard to be a gracious loser. It’s much harder to be a gracious winner. Don’t forget that in the aftermath of a successful race.”
We need to remember that advice in the aftermath of the recent election. A lot of members of Congress are leaving against their wishes because of the results. It’s hard for me to imagine that any of us on the winning side, exultant though we may be, will be anything but kind to them, no matter how we may have squabbled in the past. That’s fourth-grade playground stuff, and I’m fairly certain we’ll hear some of it issuing from the White House. Going home defeated is a hard thing, and I’m hoping we won’t hear from the Democrats any “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” type of remarks. We’ve got better stuff to do, and had best get at it.
What I’m trying to say here, Peter, is don’t screw this up (there are cruder ways to express it, but we’ve got to start somewhere if we’re to return any civility to the public discourse). The interim period before the seating of the new majorities, during which almost anything can happen and likely will, is like carrying a cup of coffee full to the brim and beyond, across a room with a white carpet. Don’t screw this up.
There’s a mass of punditry and polling purporting to know what the results of the elections reveal about the hearts’ desires of the voters. These have to do largely with our idiotic and apparently aimless military action in the Middle East, the price of fuel and groceries, and the armed, masked goon squads violently patrolling our streets in search of people whose residence may be legally compromised. But we rarely hear from fellow citizens who’ve had to declare bankruptcy because of their inability to pay medical bills. Mothers who’ve lost their SNAP benefits rarely have the time or confidence to write to the editor. Social Security is apparently headed for the rocks (a metaphor that’s lost a lot of its poignancy since the demise of the wooden ship) in just a few years without a few easily accomplished commonsense tweaks. Easily accomplished, that is, if you have a robust majority in Congress.
Which you now will have. It’s time for some impeachments, perhaps, though in most cases the objects of them will be gone before any votes. The big thing now is to start enacting legislation that actually benefits the people, and printing on the boxes of benefits the names of their sources, the way CARE packages or sacks of grain from the USA are marked. Somebody has to point out that the world’s largest and most powerful military is stealing its support (and now lobbies for more) from the citizens of the world’s only modern industrialized country without universal health care.
To reiterate, Peter: Don’t screw this up. We’ve been handed this golden opportunity by what’s probably the most odious and corrupt personality ever to hold the office of president. Give us what we need: a government that cares for us, rather than leads us this way and that and cares most deeply about its oligarchs. Let us know what you’re up to, and why. And while you’re at it, check with our crazy uncle — the one who wears knitted mittens to chilly inaugurals and who’s been right for 25 years.
