Remember: The Phoenix was a myth

We have been quietly blessed by 2020. The party conventions were virtual this year, mercifully unpopulated with bloated hysteria from either side played out to the strains of “Happy Days Are Here Again”.

They are not.

Though the result was decisive, mirroring what our current President characterized as a “landslide” in 2016, with a 6 million vote advantage out of a bit over 150 million votes cast, it was hardly overwhelming and revealed a decidedly divided electorate, nearly half voting for an insular, tribal vision of what makes America “great”. The regurgitated cry of “America First” that had defined a previous nadir of national arrogance was nearly successful in swaying the populace away from human empathy and toward a dedication to social Darwinism. Little people are little for a reason, some countries are “shitholes” and desperate circumstances are no excuse for desperate people.

This is the landscape that President-Elect Biden strides into with half of the electorate hungry for healing and half dedicated to division. One tribe looking to be a part of global solutions to global problems, one tribe happy to watch the world burn as long as we are the ones to stir the ashes at the end.

All Uncle Joe need do now is have a flawless, ascendant and triumphant stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to help span the chasm encouraged and inflamed by the current administration. Nothing short of the courage and innovation of an FDR or the wide and inclusive view of a Lincoln or the limits to ambition of a Washington or even the rhetorical brilliance of an Obama, or all of that combined, will be necessary to start the healing and prevent a hardening of the opposition’s blind hatred of the norms that have kept the secret underbelly of our nation from being our new direction.

That’s all.

What this election has revealed is how close we are to something truly barbaric, an end to government driven by the principles of the Enlightenment. Facts and reason driving decisions of, by and for the people were replaced by a naked power grab, not only by the President but by his followers as well, both within the government and among the populace. Power, power, wonder working power! Power over people. Power over countries. Power over land. Power wherever it can be wielded over whoever or whatever is weak enough to yield.

We almost were.

Right now we are experiencing the euphoria of a great sigh of relief. We avoided the inside beanball, just averting disaster. A collective “Phew!” But we are still at the plate and the end isn’t determined. As Uncle Joe faces the inevitable and enormous challenges that he will and the all-out attempts to obstruct his best efforts that will come, how much patience will his narrow mandate provide? Independents proved themselves quixotic, unpredictable, swinging from Obama to Trump to Biden in subsequent presidential election cycles. What on earth ties those three together to be the standard bearer for any single group? Who could possibly predict how they will react to a tepid presidency, an average turn at the plate?

Don’t misunderstand. I am delirious that Joe won, but not because Joe is a peculiar inspiration to me, nor to many of us that eagerly voted for him.

I ecstatically voted against Trump.

I think most of us, if we are honest, have much higher hopes for the coming administration than we have actual expectations. Fortunately, the bar has been set unfathomably low. Normalcy, average, will seem like a great victory, and on many levels it will be. The steps toward equality taken in the Obama administration have been attacked and vilified for 4 years and we must claw our way back to that standard before any progress is made. So much of what we held dear and made incremental progress toward has been tread on and just getting back to where we were then will seem victorious, and we will have to do that in the face of an opposition that has become militarized, weaponized. They have seen they have large numbers and that hate and racism and misogyny and other tribal identifiers don’t have to be hidden. They can be a political force. They have been empowered to proselytize, to seek acolytes to increase their numbers and if the norms of argument and elections don’t work, well maybe there are other ways.

We have passed into the final metastatic stage of this cancerous presidency, the fatal blow ironically landed by AG Bill Barr finding no evidence of systemic fraud. The death rattle will be ugly, leaving scars on all who witness it over the next two months. President Trump will not go gently into the dark night, knowing how dark it may become without the protective mantel of the office. The damage will be grotesque, and then we will try to repair it all, bit by bit, presidential fiat by presidential fiat.

The world waits on Georgia.