A brief remark regarding politics and prognostication thereabout

On ‘rank punditry’ about politics, elections, etc.

“Freedom is participation in power,” said this celebrated Roman senator and orator. But he also declared, “No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.” The latter might be more relevant in our present moment. Image copyright: Perry Clark.

“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” So said Dickens in the opening of ‘A Tale of Two Cities’. If here were writing now, I think he’d append: “Until now, that is. What a beautiful, horrifying mess.”

It’s early 2024, and the quadrennial circus called Presidential Election Season has gained second gear. Trump either had a “Great (But of Course Completely Expected, Unsurprising, and Divinely Ordained) Victory” or, according to those who claim he’s basically running as the reigning king of the GOP, he eked out a bare majority of support amongst those “caucusing” in Iowa, which shows he is strongly supported only by half of the GOP-registered faithful who braved deep cold, ice, and snow on a dark Iowa evening. It might be of interest to note that the turnout was low—well down, in fact, compared to 2016 (there was no Iowa Republican caucus in 2020, with Trump running unopposed): total attendance at the caucus sites was down about 40%. While some of this was due to weather, it is likely that the predictions, based on innumerable surveys of Iowa Republicans, which routinely declared that Trump was going to win, and win “bigly” at that, also significantly depressed the attendance of those already depressed by the prospect of a Big Trump Win.

It might also be of interest to note the breakdown of voter registration in the Ethanol Subsidy State. Per independentvoterproject.org, 34.5% of Iowa’s voters are registered as Republican; 30.3% are registered as Democrats, and 34.3% as independent/unaffiliated. Recognized third-party voters are only 0.9%. Digging a little deeper, one learns that the turnout for this year’s Iowa GOP presidential caucus was only about 15% of the total number of Iowa Republicans who could have shown up and done their best to imitate subjects of a Norman Rockwell painting.

Yet the pundits are—to no one’s surprise—shoveling more fuel into the engine of electoral prognostication through which said pundits justify their existence. The phrase ‘rank punditry’ has become routinely used, at least semi-ironically, by some of the pundits themselves, as a cliché useful in acknowledging, in at least a small way, the silliness inherent in the innumerable Babble-Heads bleating as loudly as possible about the short list of things they all agree we should be so very much worked up about, so as to be sure to tune in, subscribe, download, etc., tomorrow’s article, YouTube video, podcast, or whatever. Jonah Goldberg, once of National Review and now Editor-in-Chief of The Dispatch, a conservative (and decidedly NOT Trumpian) news site, is one of those more prone to describe something—including, ofttimes, his own work—as rank punditry.

So, the following continues my bit for the day, a reminder that there are things happening in that vast portion of the world (1) not nestled up against an Iowa cornfield, corndog, or anything else Iowa, even if we restrict our thinking to things political.

Very, very much of the ‘rank punditry’—and the not-so-rank punditry, too—doesn’t look beyond a near horizon. Yes, much can happen in nine months. But, compared to the immensity of possibility, and the immense variation of the nearly infinite that stretches beyond early November of 2024, January of ‘25, or even the next political caravan to the Iowa state and county fairs and the backroads and breakfast joints of New Hampshire, the possibilities of the next nine months become miniscule.

We face the likely prospect of an election between a doddering, wanderingly logorrheic octogenarian about equally prone, during a cabinet meeting, to falling asleep or droning on about his service with Ike during the war, and a dandied-up, obese, cesspool monster with a rage-fueled narcissism, who is only slightly less old and whose decrepitude, if physically slightly less, is, on the moral side, decidedly more advanced. If the momentum with which we travel on the arc of recent history, festooned as that arc is by the elections of 2016 and 2020, continues sans significant change, in what condition, with what national identity, will America find itself in, say, 2036, or 2040?

Many profess ultimately to be sanguine about things, declaring that “the American people” will once again return to sensible self-rule under the aegis of a Constitution now being challenged from every point of the compass. This ignores the fraught nature of democracy, and the doubts harbored by such as Adams, Franklin, and other founders worried about the prospects of the nascent republic. What kind of government will we have, Franklin was asked. “A republic, if you can keep it.” Evidence continues to accrue suggesting that, over the long haul, we might not keep it. Instead, we’ll have exchanged it, perhaps, or so it seems to me, for a populist authoritarian government first dolled up with the cheaper trappings of democracy, and later just accompanied by a skeleton, labeled “Democracy” and trotted out for public view during elections held and controlled by the vain and powerful.

I am not a registered member of either major party, or any other. When urged or cajoled by others to join either the Democratic Party or that Frankenstein’s monster now calling itself the Republican Party, the common theme is one of “binary choice” between this or that, us or them, etc., etc. I sometimes respond by pointing to some of the wrong, stupid, bigoted, nonsensical, or evil things being done by the parties or their powerful elites, and ask why I should willingly and publicly associate with either. Their respective candidate choices are merely Exhibit 1—but useful. These are the best that the two major parties of the World’s Greatest Democracy can do? I’m nearly always told that it’s going to be one or the other, and I should, in effect, hitch my wagon onto the train running in the better direction. That I see both trains driving into the ditch is seen as of no consequence.

I shall continue to declare that we can do better. And we must do better. Or, I fear, the gift we’ve been given will rust and corrode and split until there’s no more than a pile of busted lumber and rubble where once stood a cathedral of liberal government.

If that’s how it goes, there will be sadness and perhaps even a quasi-biblical gnashing of teeth. But it won’t be the first time in history a grand nation falls, nor, I suspect, the last. Fate, being really the result of a host of choices, some infinitesimal, some quite grand, but most of the hum-drum mass through which we wade every day, is not fickle. It delivers to us the dish we have asked for, seasoned here and there by a dash of randomness.

I worry. It is in my nature. My consolation is that I believe there will always be people of good will, with declared devotion to truth, love, honor, goodness, and the beauty they bring. At times that number may be small, but, if my own passion is but the dimmest and most distant reflection, the fire of that camp burns brightly, and will not be extinguished.

[Ahem.] Okay then. Thus endeth today’s homily. Let us continue with a hymn to the noble who’ve fallen in duty to God, family, and country. Amen. Oh—don’t forget—Saturday is Bingo Night, and also, this week, the Annual Chili Cook-Off. Dr. Reynolds has agreed to ensure that a generous supply of Pepsid will be available. Hope to see you all there. Amen.

Oh, and don’t worry. While I shall continue to declare we can and should do better, it will never become the dominant theme of An Elephant’s Tail. There’s just so much more to go on about.