New View Askew

  I’m an older guy, a retired military officer and a person who thought he had seen everything in this crazy world. Yet here I am, as bewildered at the next person and wondering what is going on in my country.                                                                      President-Elect Joe Biden We just had an election in which the pollsters were apparently wrong again (except in MN, thank God!) Despite projections – and fervent hope by Democrats – the election was very close in a lot of races and went the opposite way in many others. The big surprise, at least to me, is not that Biden won the popular vote by a substantial margin (which sadly doesn’t matter with our goofy electoral system) but that Trump did so well. I am shocked , as are many others, I think,  that millions of our fellow countrym...

  Like over 75 million other Americans – the greatest winning vote total in history - I am happy with the defeat of Donald Trump, who shockingly had second highest vote total. Yet somehow, I find it hard to be happy about the overall outcome. I’m not talking about politically disappointing, although that is probably true for pretty much everyone on both sides who voted. No, I‘m very dissatisfied with continued gridlock. More accurately, I am unhappy that most of us consider this a good outcome. It strikes me that when the only thing we agree on is that gridlock, for one reason or another, is a natural and positive goal – I won’t get anything but then neither will you! - it speaks to a uniquely American preference for wanting a government that doesn’t work.   I know, I get it, the Founding Fathers in their wisdom created this interbranch tension to make sure no one branch could overpower the others; they obviously they wanted to limit what the government could do and it worke...