A Midterm Gasp

To gasp is to inhale suddenly with the mouth open, either out of pain or astonishment.  To gasp is a convulsive catching of the breath in order to go on.  Democracy gasped last night in order to go on. There was no “Blue wave” and there was no “Red tsunami” last night.  There was only a catching of the breath to hold back, by checks and balances, a severely damaged democracy.  Joe Scarborough on his show this morning kept referring to this “gasp” as a sign that democracy still works or at the very least will go on struggling for a little while.  After two years of one party rule, without checks and balances, democracy gasped at last and the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives. 

Personally, I had hoped and prayed that this midterm election would be a repudiation of Donald Trump and Trumpism. I do not mean the repudiation of conservatism nor do I imply a validation of liberalism or progressivism.  Both the conservative and the liberal are essential to democracy.  I mean only the repudiation of Donald Trump and Trumpism. That did not happen.  I am baffled.  I thought the American people would repudiate it.  I am deeply disappointed.  But I am not defeated.  I am a believer with Jesus, Plato, Carlyle, William Cullen Bryant, Martin Luther King, Jr, and many others: “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.”  The rejection of objective truth cannot last—Truth shall rise again.  Reality distortion cannot survive for long.  We’ll soon see through it.

I read recently that Trump and Trumpism are attempting to move us back into the nineteenth century, while traditional Democrats are holding us captive in the twentieth century.   It could be that both the “red” and the “blue” are old and dying entities on their last gasp.  There is a desperate need for new (red, blue, yellow or brown) leaders to carry us into the exciting and invigorating world of the twenty-first century.  We must keep democracy gasping.