Someone told me that this presidential election is God's judgment on us. The speaker wasn't even waiting for the result to be announced in November. God, they figure, is ticked off at us, and the fact we have two such flawed candidates is already all the proof you need.
Maybe God isn't angry at all. Maybe this is another example of the sense of humor He is sometimes credited with . I like the idea of a capricious God, like the ones in Greek mythology. It's possible he likes throwing a spanner into the works now and then just to watch us jump, something like the picture we get of Him in the Book of Job. It could be worse than this choice between Hillary and Trump, we could find ourselves covered in painful boils, like Job.
It's been amusing to watch the political parties that have dominated public life over the last century and a half tearing themselves apart over this election season. It's been amusing except when its been too painful to watch, which is about half the time. Half laugh fest, and half tearful agony, that's about the right proportion. A normal election would come with less tears, but less laughs too.
This election didn't come out of the blue. If God is intervening then he began constructing the setup for this elaborate prank long ago. It comes out of a backdrop of the extreme polarization that has been the dominant feature of American politics for the last fifty years. In "the Fractured Republic" by Yuval Levin, which was published this year, this path to political tribalism over the last half century is examined and explained. Yuval's premise is that Democrats and Republicans are alike in their sense of nostalgia for the middle years of the twentieth century but mostly for much different reasons. For liberals, that was a time when government really worked, people were more accepting of its many intrusions into their lives, into business too. Business, labor, and government worked togeather to provide unprecedented economic growth that reached every tier of society, the rewards falling equally among them. For conservatives, the post war years represent an expanding economy, but also a time of social stability, an era of broadly shared values, hard work, education, thrift, and family. Conservatives are often equally nostalgic for the eighties, the Reagan years. It's considered a time of reassessment, of tax cutting and regulatory reform that and unleashing an economy that had too long been restrained by both. He also brought optimism and purpose to a nation shaken by recent social upheaval, civil strife, high inflation and stagnant wages.
The sad news Levin has for conservatives is that those "city on a hill" Reagan years won't be coming back anytime soon. That moment has passed. Clearing up today's problems will require twenty-first century solutions. Liberals need to get with the program as well. The fifties and sixties are even less likely to return , and anyhow nostalgia for the Buddy Holly years is seriously misplaced . The economy was on fire at that time, and wages saw real growth, but a recent world war had devastated the other major economies. America found itself producing half the world's manufactured goods. There was room to grow and prosper because we were what was left when the fighting was over. It's popular to write that during these peak years of union power, wages, relative to inflation, were also at there peak, and the middle class reached a sort of nadir. From that day till this ,middle class Americans would see their purchasing power steadily decrease. That's not even close to being true. The middle-class may have shrunk, but most of the former middle class have moved upward rather than descending the other direction. The purchasing power of today's American is far in advance of our parents and grandparents, something like comparing an old fashioned rotary phone to the miraculous computers we talk into, and do a hundred other things with today.
Levin contends that a romanticized and fallacies picture of the past cripples both sides of the political divide , preventing them from carefully accessing current challenges and reaching solutions to meet them. It also hampers the parties from appreciating the strengths of the other, and cooperating despite their differences.
Most of all Levin regrets that over the course of the last century the United States has inexorably moved power toward the center, toward federal bureaucrats, toward the Whitehouse (did I mention that Levin is libertarian?). He calls instead for a recommitment to subsidiarity, which is placing power ever closer to the people. Top down solutions that may have worked well for earlier generations are clearly not working today. Or we could join old Job and learn to live with boils.
Maybe God isn't angry at all. Maybe this is another example of the sense of humor He is sometimes credited with . I like the idea of a capricious God, like the ones in Greek mythology. It's possible he likes throwing a spanner into the works now and then just to watch us jump, something like the picture we get of Him in the Book of Job. It could be worse than this choice between Hillary and Trump, we could find ourselves covered in painful boils, like Job.
It's been amusing to watch the political parties that have dominated public life over the last century and a half tearing themselves apart over this election season. It's been amusing except when its been too painful to watch, which is about half the time. Half laugh fest, and half tearful agony, that's about the right proportion. A normal election would come with less tears, but less laughs too.
This election didn't come out of the blue. If God is intervening then he began constructing the setup for this elaborate prank long ago. It comes out of a backdrop of the extreme polarization that has been the dominant feature of American politics for the last fifty years. In "the Fractured Republic" by Yuval Levin, which was published this year, this path to political tribalism over the last half century is examined and explained. Yuval's premise is that Democrats and Republicans are alike in their sense of nostalgia for the middle years of the twentieth century but mostly for much different reasons. For liberals, that was a time when government really worked, people were more accepting of its many intrusions into their lives, into business too. Business, labor, and government worked togeather to provide unprecedented economic growth that reached every tier of society, the rewards falling equally among them. For conservatives, the post war years represent an expanding economy, but also a time of social stability, an era of broadly shared values, hard work, education, thrift, and family. Conservatives are often equally nostalgic for the eighties, the Reagan years. It's considered a time of reassessment, of tax cutting and regulatory reform that and unleashing an economy that had too long been restrained by both. He also brought optimism and purpose to a nation shaken by recent social upheaval, civil strife, high inflation and stagnant wages.
The sad news Levin has for conservatives is that those "city on a hill" Reagan years won't be coming back anytime soon. That moment has passed. Clearing up today's problems will require twenty-first century solutions. Liberals need to get with the program as well. The fifties and sixties are even less likely to return , and anyhow nostalgia for the Buddy Holly years is seriously misplaced . The economy was on fire at that time, and wages saw real growth, but a recent world war had devastated the other major economies. America found itself producing half the world's manufactured goods. There was room to grow and prosper because we were what was left when the fighting was over. It's popular to write that during these peak years of union power, wages, relative to inflation, were also at there peak, and the middle class reached a sort of nadir. From that day till this ,middle class Americans would see their purchasing power steadily decrease. That's not even close to being true. The middle-class may have shrunk, but most of the former middle class have moved upward rather than descending the other direction. The purchasing power of today's American is far in advance of our parents and grandparents, something like comparing an old fashioned rotary phone to the miraculous computers we talk into, and do a hundred other things with today.
Levin contends that a romanticized and fallacies picture of the past cripples both sides of the political divide , preventing them from carefully accessing current challenges and reaching solutions to meet them. It also hampers the parties from appreciating the strengths of the other, and cooperating despite their differences.
Most of all Levin regrets that over the course of the last century the United States has inexorably moved power toward the center, toward federal bureaucrats, toward the Whitehouse (did I mention that Levin is libertarian?). He calls instead for a recommitment to subsidiarity, which is placing power ever closer to the people. Top down solutions that may have worked well for earlier generations are clearly not working today. Or we could join old Job and learn to live with boils.
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