"Celebration"

Let's take a sec to give proper thanks for the relative health of American democracy and civil society

For this, the first CeeGees Thanksgiving Week post, let’s get crazy. Let’s actually participate in some honest-to-goshness giving of thanks!

THE BIG IDEA: The midterm election results were a big effin’ deal we should be 10 times more thrilled about than we are. Not because Democrats won (they didn’t, really), or Republicans lost (they didn’t, really), but because “normie” Americans won (for the most part) and “bad-actor” Americans lost (for the most part).

It wasn’t too long ago that I was totally ignorant of what ”normie” meant. I heard a musician use the term to describe someone with a 9 to 5 job who clearly didn’t understand what it meant to be an artiste like him (ha). So I’ve always considered it a slight.

Now the scuttlebutt around politics seems to be that the midterms fight was really all about the normie voters versus the extremist voters. “Normie” voters being a good thing, suddenly! Or we could rephrase the matchup like, “the average everyday Americans who aren’t so despondent as to tolerate authoritarianism, versus the Americans who remain deeply committed to blowing up a broken system, regardless of the means.”

There were plenty of Magans who won their elections this year, but they were mostly from parts of the country where the outcome was never in doubt. The higher-profile election deniers, MAGA sycophants, and Trump loyalists were the ones who appear to have failed, and profoundly.

In terms of governors’ races, the only Trump-endorsed governor I know of who won was the Republican candidate for governor in Nevada, sheriff and veteran Joe Lombardo. And apparently he was wary of getting too close to Trump—he accepted the endorsement and made some wishy-washy statements about potential voting irregularities, but otherwise stuck to tried-and-true conservative issues like backing the police and slashing government spending.

Although…when The Nevada Independent asked him in a debate whether Trump was a “great” president, and he refused to agree with that assessment, and Trump threw a shit-fit and threatened to retract his endorsement? Out came the official statement confirming that, on second thought, Trump really was a “great” president. Crisis averted.

So Lombardo is, perhaps, only a borderline bad actor. I’ve leaned on using that term “bad actor” lately because, from my perspective as a non-insider who’s only going by what he reads in the news, I would bet money that about FIVE PERCENT of those politicians who campaigned as supposed “election deniers” don’t believe for one millisecond that widespread fraud is really a thing.

5% or less, really.

So my guess is that almost all election deniers are bad actors—as in, they don’t believe the baloney they’re spewing. They’re just saying whatever those on the far-right—i.e., the obsessively engaged constituents who are most motivated to vote for them—want to hear. It’s a means to an end, the end being that they need to be in office no matter what. And once that office is secured, they’ll become good actors (by their definition) and do good things (by their definition) for their communities.

In contrast to Lombardo’s weak embrace of MAGA, full-on Nevada Magans Adam Laxalt, candidate for U.S. Senate, and Jim Marchant, candidate for Nevada secretary of state, both lost. Not handily, but they lost in a state that was especially livid over the government’s handling of Covid and seemed primed to lash out at the ballot box. But in the end, enough people seem to have voted for democracy and for more “normie” leaders than were compelled to vote for insincere opportunists who cared more about performative culture-war politics than getting stuff done that might actually improve people’s lives.

So, point being: we should hold up, take a step back, take a deep breath, and contemplate what a positive outcome these midterms really were! And celebrate the fact that America is not going to be completely controlled by jerks beholden to the filthy rich.

So, let’s shout it out loud enough that the sentiment spreads up, out, and across the whole wide universe: SOCIETY HAS NOT YET FALLEN! AND FOR THAT, WE ARE IMMENSELY THANKFUL!!!

Ok. So.

Did you shout that out?

Feel good?

Great. Now the caveat.

American government is still broken. The same stuff that drove many 2016 voters to pick DONALD TRUMP for president, for Peter’s sake—because at that point, they thought, why not?—all that infuriating stuff is still going on.

Another theory I’ve thrown out there as a loyal Midwesterner is that only a smallish fraction of the 71 million who voted for Donald Trump in 2020 are devoted Magans. And I believe that theory was borne out in the 2022 election. Fewer and fewer people who were never Magans but are longtime conservatives were willing to hold their noses and vote Republican. And I feel like fewer and fewer right-leaners who got caught up in the fun and community that MAGA provided in the past were willing to continue supporting bad-actor candidates. Because when you get down into their bones, most of them are really good people. They were just misinformed and became misguided in a confusing and frustrating time.

So with any luck, the heyday of the higher-profile bad actors, from Trump on down, is petering out. But the problems average everyday Americans are experiencing today are as debilitating as they ever were. The system is as broken as ever. And that paves the way for non-MAGA candidates, ones who still aspire to cater to the Gods of Profit and ignore the rest of us. The message just won’t be so bogged down in hate and bile and division.

So let’s celebrate that American democracy and civil society are still standing. And then next week let’s silently reiterate to ourselves that both those heavy pillars of American life are standing on some seriously skinny-ass chicken legs.

Yours,
~Dean

P.S. - Admit it…you thought I was gonna link to this and this in that paragraph where i said “SOCIETY HAS NOT YET FALLEN,” didn’t ya…..