I haven’t posted anything about politics since election day. So many people have been so happy with the results. People were literally dancing in the streets. I don’t want to mess with that. I want people to be happy, I really do. I just don’t get where that happiness is coming from.
I know Biden won the presidency. I get the relief that Trump won’t be getting a second term. I feel that, but it’s as far as I can get myself. It’s Joe Biden who won. He’s a better choice than Bernie Sanders, Marianne Williamson, and Tulsi Gabbard, but pretty much any other Democrat would have been preferable. He’s mediocrity personified.
I’ve felt this way for a long time. When Obama picked him for Vice President, I was confused. How could someone so young and dynamic pick a running mate so old and entrenched? Then I realized that was Biden’s appeal. Obama knew he was going to have to deal with a thousand completely made up issues like birtherism. Biden would stop any of those attacks from coming through the Vice President’s office by being so average.
Combine Biden with losing seats in the House, failing to turn the Senate, and the typical results in state and local elections and I find myself discouraged. It’s not even that I think Biden will be actively bad. The election results could have been much worse, but “could have been worse” isn’t what we need right now. We still haven’t recovered from Watergate, let alone all the damage Trump and McConnell have done. I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t see any way that Biden is the guy to start that work.
I know this hasn’t been a constructive piece. That’s mainly because I haven’t been able to work out what to do. My thoughts range from hope for the best to Blue State secession. It would help me if I saw anyone else talking about this. Everything I see seems to either wish Trump had won or is happy with Biden. I guess I want to start a new conversation. How do we force mediocrity to be excellent? How do we remake “could have been worse” into good? I’m open to suggestions.
I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing that secession should be legal, but I keep running into the slavery/secession problem.
I sometimes wonder if we’d be better off now if Lincoln had let the South go. It would have been a humanitarian disaster for all of the slaves trapped in the South, but Jim Crow turned into a humanitarian disaster anyway.