Okay, so only if you’re old do you remember Dr. Demento. And you have to be a bit of a comic fan on top of that to remember the satire of the original Christopher Reeves Superman movie using a Steve Winwood/Santana song titled “I’m Winning” – basically, the song was the backdrop to the fight scene with Zod with Superman supposedly singing “I’m Winning” while the good doctor interjected a more realistic assessment (No, you’re losing! You’re losing!). Spoiler – Superman wins.
Big tech censorship, a highly questionable election, extreme curtailing of the most basic of civil rights – not exactly looking great for the good guys.
Except that the second act is never the end of the movie. It’s always unwise to pull out your biggest guns when you aren’t likely to destroy the target. Never let the other guy see your hand until you are sure of winning – which is exactly what the left has done.
The thing about stomping the other guy is you better be sure he doesn’t know your name – because you might just find the cops waiting for you when you get home. If you can’t deal the knock out blow be ready for the next round!
Enough with the metaphors – here’s the deal. The American political system is slow by design. Not letting people make big changes rashly is a good plan – but the irritating drawback is that it’s hard to adjust quickly when the other side is playing dirty.
But it’s far from impossible. Lincoln noted that you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. Truth has a nasty habit of catching up to the lies even though the lies travel much faster. Eventually, people figure out that something is wrong – and a determined few (especially the determined few you just deplatformed and REALLY ticked off) go after the truth and drag it into the spotlight.
This is not the first questioned election in US history. It’s not the first time in US history that the media has deceived people. It’s not even the first time in US history that free speech itself has been threatened. The US would have ended before the Civil War had if mere corruption and civil unrest were all it took. Political rancor has always been the name of the game in American politics.
Coming out of the World Wars there was a drive and hunger for civility and normalcy. The First World War made the American Civil War look like a boxing match – and the American Civil War had been the bloodiest in modern history. Quaint pictures of Doughboys on their way home don’t convey the battlefield horror that were the mechanized killing grounds of the First World War. American had been relatively unscathed – but not so just a bit more than two decades later when American entered the Second World War. We had learned to do mechanized war better than ever – which made for horrendous battles and causality counts- and we saw human depravity we never wanted to conceive of, either in ourselves or others. We had had enough.
There is no sainted generation – not even the Greatest Generation. The Fifties had more than their share of national ills – and national failings. But that decade was unique in its quest for the American Way – honesty, prosperity, national pride, personal responsibility and even social responsibility. The Civil Rights movement preceded the Fifties by nearly thirty years if you just date from the first sit ins – but only in that environment of a country seeking after its own righteousness could the movement finally flourish and begin to win (and the advent of TV helped a heck of a lot, too).
The age of the professional, objective journalist is not coincidental – that air of objectivity saved journalism. People were wary of yellow rags that touted lies as truth – and came to expect the Murrow school of journalistic ethics.
And time marched on. We had our ups and downs. We continued to have our contentious debates. We even had wars. What we didn’t have was any significant split in the electorate. Democrats and Republicans both struggled to differentiate themselves as the country became more and more centrist. It became the norm for the party in power to not accomplish its platform – deliberately – so that it would have issues to run on the next election cycle. By the end of the millennium, it was almost impossible to tell the party platforms apart if you took out two or three key issues. And it took nearly fifteen more years before the parties showed a significant split.
All of which is great – and almost completely without precedent in American history. We’ve gotten along with each other better in the last 80 years than in all the previous 165 (dating from the Declaration)!
Which makes the current political upheaval seem all the more frightening – we’re just not used to flexing our political muscles anymore – not really. It isn’t as important what party you are voting with when they only differ on a few key points. They agree on all the important stuff – right versus wrong, good over evil, smooth versus crunchy – so only those who were particularly concerned about the key issues needed to be all that politically active. The rest of us could skip the five o’clock report and watch something more entertaining.
Until we realized we weren’t all in agreement on the important stuff anymore. Until Portland made rioting a civic duty. Until our favorite YouTube channel was removed because of something someone said twenty years ago. Politics thrust its nosy self into our personal lives in ways that we wouldn’t have believed possible just two years ago.
So, that’s it. We’re done for. End of the American Experiment, pack up the Constitution and let’s greet our new overlords – OH HECK NO!
States have begun to fight back – and the courts to respond. Funny how kicking people in the teeth will get them motivated to find a way to take down the neighborhood bully. Republicans seem to have decided that they don’t want to compete with the Independents and the Green party for that one seat in some half bonkers district. They are showing all the indicators of cleaning their own house – and that’s very bad news for the left.
You don’t legitimately win elections hiding in your basement. Now, maybe the three million folks who still watch the traditional media believe otherwise – but there are a lot more who had questions when it happened and have a lot more questions due to the efforts to quash any dissent about the 2020 outcome. There are a lot of things most folks will forget about in two years – that’s not one of them. With eighteen months remaining, it looks like a large number of folks are forgetting to forget.
Never backstab with a pocketknife. All it accomplishes making the guy really mad – and intent on coming at you with something a little more effective – like naval artillery!
The lawsuits have only just begun. The state legislatures are passing election laws and censorship laws at a legislative breakneck speed – only six months is incredibly fast for the legislative process which is supposed to be slow. And unlike ’emergency orders’ these are laws. They don’t expire – and they don’t go away because people elect a new governor. Our states are waking up from a long slumber – and a lot of them are showing their teeth.
It’s only the beginning of the third act. Still a lot of work to be done – and complacency is no longer an option. Welcome to the normal world of American politics – strap on your chaps, mount up and move ’em out! The American people are America’s greatest asset – especially when they take charge of their government. You know, like that Constitution thing says?
It may be a rough ride – but it won’t be boring. Spoiler alert – Superman can only lose if he quits – and we Americans don’t do quit.
