Are we at the beginning of a new era or sliding farther down the slippery slope that will end small-d democratic government in the U.S.?
Are we ready to dismiss Trumpism or do we just have a short interlude before it comes roaring back stronger than ever?
I have a very close friend who refuses to vote for either party, but if you press him on it, he’ll tell you the Democrats are worse than the Republicans. At one point in the recent campaign, he said he didn’t like Donald Trump but he did think Trump’s policies were better for the country than Joe Biden’s.
It isn’t that he’s stupid or uninformed. He’s not. I know many smart people, and he would fit somewhere in the top 10. No, the problem is he’s all twisted up inside because of some unfortunate life experiences involving the government.
That’s at least part of the problem. A lot of people wind up anti-government because of a problem with one part of the government — maybe even just one person — and then expand their anger to everything from the town council to the U.S. Senate.
It’s sort of like hating all science-fiction movies because you got diddled by a guy in a Chewbacca costume at a Halloween party.
It’s really strange to think that just 50 or 60 years ago, both political parties had liberals, moderates and conservatives among their members. In fact, the terms liberal and conservative had somewhat different meanings than they do now. Liberals were moderate leftists back then, while radicals were the ones who wanted big change quickly.
Conservatives basically figured things were pretty much OK as they stood, while reactionaries were the ones who wanted to change things back to the way they used to be. As I said in another recent piece, Richard Nixon said in one of the 1960 debates that both he and John Kennedy were for pretty much the same goals. It was only methods and speed of change they disagreed about.
For the last 40 years, it has been the basic policy of the Republican Party — from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump — to attack the very idea of government playing a significant role in our lives.
Reagan was the one who did the most damage. He actually said on numerous occasions that the only reason people went to work for the government was because they weren’t good enough to be successful in the private sector. My Chewy-hating friend calls them “snivel servants.”
It wasn’t really that long ago — less than a hundred years, in fact — that the government was tiny compared to now. Of course in 1930, there were only 122,775,046 Americans living in 48 states. In the years before Social Security numbers it was still quite possible for someone to just pick up stakes, disappear to another part of the country and live under a different name.
That’s pretty much what my birth father did. He disappeared in 1952 and we never saw or heard from him again.
It was still possible for years after that. I’m not sure when the law was changed that parents had to get SSNs for their babies, but I know I never got a Social Security number till I was 17 and got my first summer job in 1967.
There’s a whole sector of business how designed to help people live off the grid, to reduce their visible footprint as much as possible. These folks are known as “preppers,” and no, it has nothing to do with preppies or prep schools.
What “prepping” is, in this case, is preparing. Preparing for the collapse of society, or at least for earthquakes or floods.
I’ll probably never go full prepper. I’m just not a gun person, although I do have several good camping knives and a reasonably wicked hatchet. But as far as the rest of it, I have a medium-sized generator, solar panels to charge it, a cooler that also has a compartment for keeping things warm and a six-months supply of food for two people.
I did most of that because of the pandemic, figuring that if it were to get so bad we couldn’t go anywhere, we would be OK.
It’s not out of mistrust of the government, although I have a lot less faith in it when conservatives are running it. But that’s mainly because I’m OK with the government doing things, while the people who Trump appointed were trying to hollow out their departments.
It’s not going to be easy to straighten things out, but we’re going to have to try.
As for my friend, he freaked out the other night when we were watching “Harry and the Hendersons.”
It took me 15 minutes to convince him it was a bigfoot, not a wookie.
I finally had to switch the channel and let him watch a “Full House” marathon.
He loves him some Olsen twins.