The Big Day

Glory be to God, it’s finally here...and barring an evil miracle, twenty-four hours from now it will be behind us.

Have you ever experienced as wearying a campaign season as this one? The relentless attack ads in the newspapers and the broadcast media, the endless phone calls and pleas for contributions, the door-ro-door visits from “ground game” workers...all together, it was enough to get me answering the door with a shotgun. I hate to be so negative about “democracy” – which the U.S. is not -- but now and then being tortured to death by paper cuts seemed a preferable fate.

The worst part is, of course, the “upper bound” on our expectations. In this supposed “wave” election, what’s the most we can rationally hope for?

1. Twenty-one of the 535 federal legislative mandarins might change from D to R: perhaps nine in the Senate twelve in the House of Representatives.
2. A few governors might be displaced; a few state legislatures might shift from Democrat to Republican control.
3. The “permanent government” – i.e., the millions of federal bureaucrats who possess, de facto, the unreviewable power to write law – will remain where they are and will continue to do pretty much as they please.
4. Barack Hussein Obama will continue in office for another two years, two months, and sixteen days.
5. In the realm of legislated law and foreign policy, very little -- approximately nothing – will change.

Bullet #5 is the ultimate verdict. Given the political dynamics of our time, there’s no real hope for even a modest return toward Constitutional government. The GOP’s snout is as deeply buried in the feeding trough as the Democrats’. Worse, the Republican caucus on Capitol Hill lacks the cojones to do the one thing that might retard the further destruction of the rule of law: impeach Obama. They fear what the Obamunite media would say about them more than the prospect of a presidential dictatorship.

I wouldn’t look to 2016 for salvation. Let’s postulate the very best plausible outcome imaginable from the election two years hence: strengthened GOP caucuses in both houses of Congress plus Rand Paul or Ted Cruz in the White House. What could we expect to change then? Once the Republican Party has firm control of Washington, it would confront the temptation to employ the power the Democrats have usurped for Republican ends and special interests. Should it succumb – and that’s the well established pattern of history, Gentle Reader – not even a President Paul or President Cruz could do much about it.

So why vote? Why contribute the merest sliver of your time and energy to this seemingly pointless process?

Three reasons:

• There remains yet a tiny chance that the GOP will not succumb to power-lust;
• State and local elections are the staging ground for future changes in the power elite;
• The results of initiative and referendum propositions at the state and local levels remain important influences on wider political perceptions.

All that having been said, my hope is just for a stretch of peace before the presidential campaigning begins. We can already see how viciously contested that race will be. We can already estimate the density of the ads, the contribution drives, and the phone calls. And I don’t know about you, Bubba, but I’m putting out claymores to deal with the next batch of door-to-door pollsters and campaign workers. (Remember to put the side that says “Front Toward Enemy” facing the street.) It’s bad enough that there’s a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses right around the corner.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, the prescription for the common citizen who mostly wants to be left alone remains as it was:

• Keep your affairs, personal or economic, as private as possible.
• Cultivate the trust and good will of your neighbors.
• Practice your intermediate-range marksmanship.
• Make modest preparations for civil disorder.
• Transmit these notions to your family.

Above all, get right with God. “You know not the day nor the hour.” Elections shouldn’t have any bearing whatsoever on that...but strangely enough, for many, many people they do.