Another Most Important Election in Our History is done. Thank God for small favours.By Yours Truly
https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/community/wmXMyXSm7E-ZbBOPii1ikA/
Once upon a time, broadcast legend Red Barber was asked what he thought about heavy hearts after a Florida State University football loss by one point. The man who suggested in the moment, on the air, that Brooklyn Dodger fans would get over losing the 1951 pennant playoff soon enough, compared to worse things happening elsewhere, didn’t flinch.
“I was around the Ohio State-Notre Dame game in 1935,†said Barber, on one of his pleasant morning segments for twelve years worth of Fridays on NPR’s
Morning Edition, “and the Bobby Thomson home run, and the Mickey Owen dropped third strike, and the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 win over the Redskins. And I saw the FSU-Miami one-point game.
“And you know what happened the next morning? The sun rose right on time.â€
Well, then. As usual, the election now concluded (if you don’t count races too close to call as of midnight and, perhaps, some requiring recounts) was ballyhooed as The Most Important Election in Our History. As elections have been ballyhooed since not too long after the United States went from founding to living, breathing country.
“The people’s pulse had been taken, charted, predicted, and catalogued. And they were told exactly whom they would elect, and by what majority. And yet—it couldn’t hurt to watch the campaign, anyhow.†That was Edward R. Murrow, in 1949, reviewing the 1948 elections for volume two of his documentary album
I Can Hear It Now.
Those elections were The Most Important Elections in Our History, too. That was then, this is now, and in terms of national elections there have been 31 Most Important Elections in Our History since, including the one just concluded. The people’s pulses were taken, charted, predicted, and catalogued for those, too, and they were told likewise whom they would elect and by what majority.
And, yet, it hurt like hell a little more each time to watch them, anyhow. Right up until this one, which didn’t just hurt like hell, it felt like having been burned to the third degree with blow torches, from the commentaries which ejaculated as though the line between reason and mania was never once drawn to the relentless report of robocalling that seems to have allowed few households more than a half hour’s worth of peace before the next telephone ring.
The practical results, of course, are that for all their fustian and all their handwringing and all their Gawdsaking (as in, H.G. Wells isolating the hysterical breed as “For gawdsakes let’s do somethingâ€) the political class, the commentariat, and those among we commoners to whom politics is the alpha and omega of human existence couldn’t stop Americans from deciding the least mischievious government for the next two years to come is divided government.
The Republicans increased their Senate majority by the hair of their chinny chin chin. The Democrats took a House majority likewise. President Tweety may find himself thwarted a little more profoundly in the House than he was when it had a Republican majority that didn’t always ask “Which cliff?†when he hollered “Jump!†But if the Senate will check the House’s less reasonable assaults, there will be little either chamber can do to check the president’s less reasonable tweetstorms, falsehoods, self congratulations, or self exposures in Constitutional illiteracy.
In a word, gridlock. And in a political climate that continues yet to uphold nothing more substantial than that the State is or should the be-all and end-all of life, nothing more profound than that there is simply no element of life that can or should be allowed to avoid political address, whether political address is either competent or Constitutionally sanctioned, gridlock is the outcome devoutly to be wished for so long as it lasts.
And, in another few words, thank God the campaign is over at last. Campaigning today makes that of 1948 seem to have been watching a world-class World Series. (In case you wondered, in the actual 1948 World Series the Cleveland Indians defeated the Boston Braves. Not even the
Chicago Tribune could
misfire the headline for that one.) This year we saw a world-class World Series and yet another season of no-class politics, protest, punditry, and posturing. Bottom to top. Left to right. As if the sole legitimate response to any reminder that we stand on the shoulder of giants is to pee down their collars.
You shudder when you imagine what the like of Tammany Hall, Franklin Roosevelt, the Prendergast machine which begat Harry Truman, Truman himself, Joseph McCarthy, Richard Daley, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, the Nassau County Republicans of the 1960s and 1970s, and Bill Clinton would have been in the Twitterverse, had there been a Twitterverse for them to navigate in those times.
But some funny things happened the morning after The Latest Most Important Election in Our History.
Yes, Mr. Barber of blessed memory, the sun rose right on time.
The autumn flora continued doing what the autumn flora does. Likewise the fauna.
The great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans continued bathing the coasts west and east, and the great rivers continued running.
Americans continued having breakfast, going to school, going to work, appreciating God’s handiwork in nature and man’s in the arts, and volunteering in the aftermaths of natural disasters and cold blooded murders.
As Cato Institute senior fellow Michael D. Tanner
writes in National Review, tens of thousands of Americans continue working with and for the victims of Hurricane Michael; over a million dollars and counting continue reaching toward the families of the eleven murdered at Tree of Life Synagogue, and people from Pittsburgh’s Muslim community to thousands of Christians stand by those afflicted Jews.
Tanner has another observation: Americans remain generous people. They contributed $410 billion to charity in 2017, a year in which over 77 million Americans also gave close to seven billion hours helping neighbours and others in need. Remarkably without concern for race, creed, colour, or political preference.
They continue doing so. People such as the customers and neighbours of John Chhan—Cambodian refugee become Seal Beach, California donut proprietor—whom Tanner says are buying his entire day’s stock every day the better to get him home early to tend his homebound, aneurysm-stricken wife.
When it comes to races, I’m more inspired by pennant races and those between the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. If you don’t count 1984 Detroit, the least civilised fans celebrating a World Series triumph simply don’t have penchants for breaking entire cities. And when Wile E. Coyote, Genius, blows himself up, smothers himself under yet another misfiring Acme trap, or ends up going over his umpteen millionth cliff, he hurts himself, not the country.
And when it comes to people, I’m more inspired by volunteers, spiritually human empaths, and generous neighbours than by the chirping crickets and barking pets of the politicised (lack of?) class.
There’ll be another Most Important Election in Our History to animate the crickets and pets soon enough, God help us. Real Americans know, of course, that the most important date to come for America is Wednesday, 13 February 2019. The day pitchers and catchers begin the annual exodus to spring training.
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Note: For those interested, there is a charming retrospective of Red Barber's twelve years worth of Friday morning conversations---over the final twelve years of Barber's life---in his NPR partner Bob Edwards' Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship.---EA.
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