Now that it’s pretty clear that Joe Biden has garnered the Electoral College vote, and also won the popular vote with the greatest tally ever, over 80 million votes to the Republican candidate’s 74 million,  I can safely say that I lost this Presidential election by more than 150,000,000 votes. In fact, I can find no reports that I received any votes at all ! 

What does that mean for the greater picture about the direction of the country and the welfare of its people ? The pandemic rages on, as do wars from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Durand Line, and it doesn’t look good for my central platform planks; less military spending, more health care and housing, women’s rights and voting rights, higher taxes on the plutocrats and corporations, and clear votes in Congress on all the issues of our day put forward in clean bills so the people know where their representatives stand. The lack of regulation of money in elections and the routine denial of the principles of one person/one vote and equal protection under the law mean that our invalid democracy that denies the majority its right to govern and the minorities their claims to equal justice will continue unabated. In short, an awful lot has been heaped on the plate of President-elect Joseph Robert Biden and the administration that he will direct and the Congress and the nation that he will attempt to lead. Deeply divided, critically under-informed, and in some cases clinically depressed, the American public needs both reassurance and action if it is once again to become a force for national and global improvement, ‘an Earth restored’ to use the Society of Friend’s stated goal.

It has been a month now since the polls closed across the nation in one of the most fateful elections in United States history. There are still two Senate seats in Georgia to be determined, and the Electoral College will not certify its decision until December 14th. Meanwhile, Mr. Trump continues to cry foul and fraud in what has to be one of the most transparent swindles in American history by preying upon the credulity of his more benighted supporters to send him money in his struggle to overturn what impartial observers call a free and fair election. Some accounts have him already taking in over $200M with only the vaguest restrictions over for what the funds can be used. We can only hope that that is his final gift/grift to the country.

Imagine my surprise then when after the election and catching up on reading the pile of magazines at my disposal I read some articles in The New Yorker that I felt beautifully examined the troubled conflicts and thwarted promise of our national experiment with creating a new form of government. For those of you trying to run your classes over the internet, they are worth a read for no other reason as to inform the context for your teaching of United States history. The first two were in the November 2 issue and the last in the November 23 issue:  from The Critics section, book reviews written by Philip Deloria and Maya Jasanoff , the first on a new book about Tecumseh, the great American Indian political leader who fought against white incursions into Indian country in the early 19th century, and the second reviewing a number of literary approaches to the blinkered understanding of Britain’s imperial past. The article from the issue dated November 23, 2020, is by Andrew Marantz on The Anti-Coup, “How civil resistance works and wins”. It beautifully summarizes the inclination that direct action is taking and will need to continue along if we are ever to have real democracy in the United States. I do not personally envision any way that the United States can continue without an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and also an amendment voiding The Electoral College and establishing election of the President directly by a majority of the nation’s voters. The end of the American empire will need to be prefaced by the elimination of those Constitutional artifices that reflect the pro-slavery and  patriarchal, chauvinistic prejudices of its authors. Just muddling along is not going to cut it since government that is not responsive to the imperatives for human survival cannot in itself survive.