Relief But No Great Victory
But that is appropriate as the rebuild is massive
by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ November 7, 2020
While there are large celebrations around the US and great relief around the planet at the Biden Harris success, the feel is a relief and not victory. It is good after the years of insanity and corruption without a hint of policy or goal other than self-aggrandizement, crude racism, and theft; there isn’t much to celebrate.
The nation was badly damaged with racism and fascism encouraged, incompetent management leaving a broken economy that cannot survive without massive change, a large minority of the population lost in lies and deceit, and a dysfunctional political system. That doesn’t count the 400,000 dead by January from a completely failed pandemic response.
This is very much a win in a long civil war where the victor’s first job is to bury the dead while stopping the dying among those sickened because of evil intent and gross incompetence. Being able to start the work of recovery is the only celebration available. We need a few days of rest before the real work starts. Sadly we get more than two months but with the criminals still in control.
How much will more damage be done in spite and revenge? That is the question that hangs over this subdued celebration. The Trump Party has failed and has no honor and recognizes no unity in the nation. We have to be prepared for vindictive destruction, open sabotage, and instances of armed insurrection from the Trump Party's fringes.
But whatever is destroyed can be rebuilt. Greed can be replaced with sharing, comanagement, communal mindfulness, and compassion. The inclusive power of BLM and the Antifa movements have helped bring the country together through this brutal time. These should grow into the elements of a new political system.
This will take time, and we do not have much as climate warming is incrementally stronger each month. We need to educate the lost to understand they need help us build a shareable future for everyone and not just their own arbitrarily defined group hoping to remain in the past. The growing disaster of poverty in the face of massive wealth needs to be dealt with at all administration levels with universal standards for the biosphere.
We are only beginning to understand that we are in the age of hyperobjects as problems that cannot be solved in pieces at less than a planetary scale. These are concepts that have been denied by Trumpists but must be explained repeatedly until they are understood, and some will never accept or understand. We need to find ways to protect them and us from their failures.
The tragedy of the time lost to reactionary populations, typified by Trump and his party in the US, is not worth being angry about at this time. The opportunity has been narrowly opened to recover our future. We need to accelerate change to make up for what was lost.
Those changes will be hard and will disrupt millions, but with a shift from greed to universal wellbeing, we have the resources to mitigate these problems. The ongoing COVID response in many countries has shown what can be done. That doesn’t make the hard requirements of controlling a pandemic easier, but success means less suffering and death and a chance to explore new ways of living that help sustain our world.
