There, on my bedroom shelf, are people to whom we owe the founding of this country: Franklin, Jefferson, Madison, John Marshall (Don't forget him: He's came in at the end of the beginning, but he's huge.), Washington, Hamilton, Paine, and the like. I don't seek them out often, but when I need some reassurance that all is as it has been--not necessarily should be, but we have overcome more than we often think--it is there and recorded and dealt with. Not easy to read; Strunk and White weren't around to guide them. But important nonetheless.
Until yesterday, I wasn't sure they would be needed any longer. We've had someone running this country that's so self-centered, so sociopathic, that nothing that has ever happened, nothing that has ever preceded him, has ever mattered. Or, at least, it often has seemed so.
He has made us, like it or not, live in the present like nobody else has ever done. That is dangerous, and destructive. It reduces us and our institutions to irrelevance.
When did he ever, with any kind of depth and/or accuracy, quote the Founding Fathers? When did they ever matter to him?
They didn't. They never will. Just another reason that it's good for all of us, even those who voted for him, that he didn't get another four years in office. He would have kept going down into that rabbit warren and produced utter nihilism: the folly that nothing was important before him and that nothing after him will ever have importance.
You know what he would have done, and what he still might do if he lives long enough and manages to regain power: Try to rule for the rest of his life. Try, somehow, to undo the Twenty-Second Amendment, the wisdom behind which is now magnified, the one which limits the president to two elected terms.
If he has fought this hard against the forces that have clearly determine that he's lost the election, the forces that we have accepted with finality in nearly every election we have ever had, just because he felt he had to, just because making up a bunch of baloney is yet another way to rally his addicted minions--yes, they are addicted--he will try anything to regain that taste of power.
Try to become an emperor, the exact thing that the army offered Washington when it was clear that the British wouldn't be back to rule them anymore. But George, who had all the power anyone could possibly have had at his fingertips, who had the chance to rule America exactly as he would have fulfilled his every whim, said no.
He said it because he forced his loyal soldiers (to a fault, he knew) to think about exactly what they had fought for, exactly what Jefferson had discussed in the document we now call the Declaration of Independence, a otherwise common phrase that has gained sacred status in his country and the world: The idea that a king was unfair, that an elected leader was preferable, that government, though it mattered deeply, was transitive and changeable and ought to remain so.
But in doing so, he exceeded what other mortals would have failed at spectacularly, and what this one failed at utterly: A sense of self-control, of self-restraint. It's only been our established institutions, and the improvement thereof, that have stopped this monster from overcoming our society and dominating it.
The opportunity presented itself, and 45 lurched at it with no thought of result or precedent. I'm guessing that he had no idea, still has less than an idea, of what he could have accomplished (including his re-election) with a little humility, a little actual caring for the little guy, instead of merely trying to lie his way into getting them to think that he cared, which he clearly doesn't. He could get others to do amazing things for him. His personality is that dominant. It created a cultishness that was truly frightening but then again impressive (which is why this election was as close as it was).
But it's underlied with corruption, vindictiveness, and resentment, none of which he deserves to express or to take advantage of. The latter two, though, permeate significant numbers of our citizens, and will continue to if unaddressed. That is Joe Biden's challenge: Getting across the idea that, although they weren't on the winning side this time, that they're okay anyhow, that as citizens, they're still valuable. Yes, they lost, But their status isn't black or white. It isn't on or off.
Who lost that thread, and how, is something for the sociologists and psychologists to analyze and bandy about. Many of us will continue to reject that the Democrats are now in control. That thinking didn't just start with 45, but more definitively with Mitch McConnell's gathering of Republican Senators in 2009 to tell them that the goal was to make Barack Obama a one-term president and to not even consider or discuss anything he wanted to pass. Then to utterly reject Obama's Supreme Court nominee was a deeper denial of the democratic process (which is why it's so vital to continue to throw our energy into the Georgia Senate run-off races and try to take away McConnell's power).
It's the Republican, take-no-prisoners mantra that Newt Gingrich stressed in the 1990s that succeeds, and that is what is undermining the system presently: The idea of the 'loyal opposition', the concept that compromise is necessary to make the system run. The Constitutional Convention figured that out in 1787; it was supposed to transcend that moment. Recently, it hasn't. All 45 did was appear to be the best proponent of that strategy, solving all problems without thinking or consideration, and using language that, in the name of no 'political correctness,' cancelled tomorrow or effects on others.
There's a website called Word Genius, which floats past a word that almost no one uses in common conversation, but it's still part of our language (more nerdishness, I know). The word for today is "retroject," meaning to project backwards. That's what we've been doing, to our severe damage: retrojecting, as if the past could be lived again.
That, and unjustifiable fear (that is propelling right-wing militias to jack up their followers), loom. It's the appeal to our oneness as Americans that Biden is trying to get out there--that he can, and no doubt will, when he actually takes power. And to do so, he must beckon us once again to consider what our history has taught us. It's the one sure thing we can count on--if we pay attention.
We think about the past, yes. But it becomes more effective when we utilize it to turn the present into a manageable future. There's a big difference between doing that and dragging us back into an abandoned past that no longer works.
But I know Biden will try. That will be refreshing. And vital. Being a former history teacher, I couldn't help but point this out.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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