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Well, the midterm elections have come and gone, and my primary reaction is bitter disappointment.
I’d been tepid about the elections this year, barely taking notice of them, but allowed myself to fall for the “red wave” hype. In a sane world, that should have happened—a major backlash against inflation and insanity.
Instead, we have a brain-dead automaton in the United States Senate and a lean Republican majority in the House—a majority, I fear, that will be ultimately meaningless. At the time of writing, the balance in the Senate itself is questionable, and the Democrats may even walk away controlling it—completely the opposite of what we all thought would happen.
I was a fool to get my hopes up about national politics. Even had the Republicans taken huge majorities, what would have been the result? Would anything have substantially changed?
Perhaps with time I’ll take a more measured response to events, but right now, it seems like our national republic is a joke, and the American people are addicted to government largesse and cultural degradation. We don’t want to improve, and we don’t want to be free. We want to be children, and children can’t govern themselves.
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The Portly Politico 
Apologies for sounding like a loony conspiracy theorist but there must be something sinister going on with your ballots. It’s the only explanation as to why the results look like that. You have an embarrassment of a President, a man so mentally scarred, he shouldn’t be there at all and your ruling party is intent on destroying the country they are running and yet, bizarrely, they have found themselves running the Republicans close.
I think your voting system was infiltrated at the last election and those controlling it are still doing so. It can be the only explanation.
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I think Audre’s comment hit the nail on the head. It’s difficult to rig hundreds of elections across the country all in different precincts and States, but I do think there are a lot of independent bad actors who believe they are “saving democracy” by tampering with election results. These people think they are fighting against Nazis, so why not break the law if it means the Nazis lose?
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Audre puts it well but what you have to remember is America’s leadership has never been so much under the spotlight, and that includes the time Trump was in office, and what we’re seeing is a man who can barely string 2 sentences together, a cabinet that doesn’t know what it’s doing and creating so much division within the country that putting it back together will be no easy job. We have a cost of living crisis here but it seems America does too, with fuel, energy, food costs going through the roof and we’re expected to believe that the good people of the US of A voted in equal measure for both Democrats and Republicans?!
Sorry, I’m not buying it. Why would anyone vote to make themselves poorer?
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People will vote for all sorts of wacky things—and people! But I think there is something far more sinister going on. We’re essentially seeing a transition to a kind of progressive, high-tech, neo-feudalism, in which normal people don’t own anything, and slave for trinkets and baubles meted out by an out-of-touch, indifferent elite intent on indulging their darkest Epicurean vices.
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Look at it this way … something has been wrong for a very long time that we couldn’t quite put our fingers on. We suspected but we were never sure. In the last twenty or so years, the ‘something’ has gotten worse and gotten bigger. As things got darker, very smart people with very bright flashlights began to excavate an area we thought to be inpregnible. A potshard here; a metal piece there … The pieces began to fit together. First we had an idea that everyone shook their heads at – ‘it couldn’t be that!’ we all thought.
The diggers kept digging and got better at it all the time. The amorphous ‘something’ took shape and we could finally see a clear outline; now we had to fill in the rest. The last ten years have given us clues we missed for years; the last seven years have been remarkable! Have been revealing in ways we never expected, from places we could never have foreseen.
As we zeroed in on the something and recognized it, you didn’t think the ‘something’ was just going to give up and say, “Ok. You got me. I give up.” Of course not! It’s in its death throes and desperately trying to maintain its strength and threat.
But the ‘something’ never anticipated new diggers – they used to follow the ‘something’ but became wise (as did we) and left the ‘something’ and joined us in our endeavors to fully expose the something and not be satisfied til we do. We’re almost there. We can see the something – its form, its reach, its darkness. Now we have new diggers and some dismantlers and we’ll get more every year.
We’ve gone from knowing nothing, to doubting ourselves and what we were seeing, to being able to name, chapter and verse, what it is and how it works. Cheer up, Port! This has all happened in our lifetime and we are not going gently into that good night the ‘something’ thought it had in its hands.
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Wow! What a powerful metaphor. You are right, Audre—it’s always darkest before the dawn. We’ll beat that sinister “something” yet!
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Amen, little brother!
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Port – I think what you’ve written, “People will vote for all sorts of wacky things—and people! But I think there is something far more sinister going on. We’re essentially seeing a transition to a kind of progressive, high-tech, neo-feudalism, in which normal people don’t own anything, and slave for trinkets and baubles meted out by an out-of-touch, indifferent elite intent on indulging their darkest Epicurean vices.” can be found on a hundred different YT thumbnails. I’m not buying it. I don’t think you really do either -although it’s a powerful scare tactic. I think we were headed that way years ago and since President Trump’s first campaign and that has been exposed during and after his term has seriously slowed down (if not exactly halted) that trajectory.
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‘all’ is the word missing between ‘that’ and ‘has’. Sorry – missed it in initial proof read.
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I hope you’re right, Audre, but there’s no denying that the basics of a middle-class life, like homeownership, are increasingly difficult to attain. It feels—and we all know how feelings can be!—like we’re moving away from a society in which any of us own anything concrete and appreciable, and one in which we’re trapped in a constant cycle of consumption and renting. But there are ways to carve out good lives for ourselves.
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