Point of View: What Now?

Election night for us was the night of the living dread, and on the morrow (even our night sweats have achieved a certain simultaneity) we awoke to baleful reality in a bed next to which a George McGovern poster hangs.

Frankly, and naively, I had thought ideas were pivotal when it came to electoral politics, but, as we’ve seen, it mainly comes down to money and the sound bites money — no matter the party — buys.

Still, I couldn’t imagine how Republicans, who opposed everything and proposed nothing in recent years, and who were the ones largely responsible for the much-maligned Congressional gridlock, and who put forward no alternative ideas as far as I could tell, would be elected. And yet they have been, in great numbers.

Obamacare has been largely a success, immigrants have, as always, contributed to the economy, which last I looked was doing better than it has been, the president has been as effective as one could be in dealing with the insane Middle East, and though tardy in dealing with immigration reform has by and large been temperate and reasoned in his governance. Yet he is reviled amid calls for change.

The change I’d want would include reviving the middle class, putting joy back into learning, welcoming, rather than deporting, immigrants who want to make a better life for themselves here, leading in such a way as to increasingly enlist allies in solving military challenges and social problems, checking in concert greed wherever it rears its ugly head, checking in concert environmental voraciousness, and extending Medicare to all.

The wish list, you’ll note, posits an activist central government, and I gather that the majority of those who voted last week dream of a limited one even as they collect Social Security checks.

The good news, though, is that hereafter some bills that have languished in committees will finally see the light of day, be voted upon, and will wind up on the desk of the president, either to be signed or vetoed, in which latter case a supermajority would be required to override. In other words, lawmakers will have to stand up and be counted — a radical thought.

So, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised — that under the new regime our nation, under God, will indeed in the coming years become indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Or will divisibility proceed apace, with license and justice for some?