It's strange to find a strong argument in favor of reducing people's "freedom."And surprise, surprise. I'm not talking about guns, although every time a toddler takes daddy's gun and takes a life, the angels weep.
No, safe and sane gun policies will have to wait for more intelligent legislators who are less seduced by lobbyists.
Actually, that leads us into what we need to change.
The way we do our elections.
We need to stop wasting so much time on them. It's not only a huge waste of time and money, but it's even more destructive to our national psyche and the way we look at each other.
My closest friend in the world has always been conservative, and not really in a normal way. I think the last time he voted for either of the two major party nominees was 1984, but I think this year was the first time he referred to one of the nominees as the "embodiment of evil." And he says he doesn't like Donald Trump either.
If you look at almost any Website that has anything to do with politics these days, you'll see how much anger there is out there. My friend certainly isn't alone in thinking Hillary is evil, and Trump is pretty much a magnet for negative comments.
Here's the problem. We have elections every four years, and we have reached the point where talk about the next election begins nearly as soon as the votes are counted in the last one.
It may be hard to believe, but in 1960, John F. Kennedy didn't announce his candidacy until after the first of the year.
And in 1968, Robert Kennedy didn't announce his doomed run for the White House until the middle of March.
That was the year civility went away. Richard Nixon made his career as a politician about "us vs. them," and he won in 1968 and 1972 by painting his opponents as less than good Americans.From there it was a short step to 1980 and the entry of the Religious Right into national politics. Since then, politics has become pretty much an all-the-time thing.
This particular cycle was the worst of all. Not only did 17 candidates go after the Republican nomination, at least 4-5 of them completely unqualified, but there were actual debates in the calendar year before the election.
If that isn't goofy enough, the candidates below a certain level had a separate debate. Of course the media made the connection between that and the traditional "kiddie table" at Thanksgiving dinner. And the candidates did their level best to live down to it.
Nearly a year and a half of slugging it out left the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower with Trump as the nominee. A man who never even ran for office before, let alone held office. A man who never served in the military. A man who claims to be worth $10 billion, but won't release his tax returns.
A man who has declared one form or another of bankruptcy six times.
A man who has been sued more than 3,500 times.
A reality television performer.
There's an old expression that if you have too much time to make a decision, you'll talk yourself out of doing the right thing. There's really no other way to explain Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.
But ...
*****
I was in the process of writing about how we could benefit from mandating shorter campaigns, using the British model of 5-6 weeks from start to finish.
I know so many people whose only reaction four days before the election is, "Oh, God! When will it be over?"
Actually, I'm beginning to think it is over.
Not just this campaign, but I think we're getting pretty close to the end of our political system.
Has there ever been a campaign in our lifetime in which one party essentially said they would not allow the other party to govern?
It's still four days until Hillary Clinton learns whether she'll be elected, but Republicans in Congress already have been saying they will start impeachment investigations as soon as she takes office.
Remember when presidents actually had to do something bad after they were elected to be impeached?
Republican senators are saying they will not vote for any Supreme Court nominees Clinton would try to put on the Court.
When they win, they tell us elections have consequences.
When they lose, they deny there are any consequences.
H.L. Mencken wrote in 1922 that he thought the U.S. republic would fall within 100 years. He gave two reasons -- ignorance and greed. Amazingly, he said that before television and before even widespread network radio as entertainment.
Once was the time television wasn't such a horrible thing. In the 1950s, there was no 24-hour programming, most everything was aimed at the whole family and most households had just one set, so everyone watched together.
Now we have 24-hour programming and hundreds of channels, some providing truly vile programming. Some families practically have TVs in every room, so entertainment becomes isolating instead of bringing people together.
Ironically, instead of improving, programming gets worse and worse. Maybe the worst trend ever was so-called "reality" television. Now people get hooked on things that don't even require scripts, actors or talent.
Want to fix our country?
How about less watching?
More reading?
More doing?
Less talking and more listening?
Less taking and more giving?
Now that would be a fine country.
Time for us to get out of the way and let our kids fix things. They can fix it in time for our grandchildren. They really are better than we are.
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