Our Most Sacred Holiday
Our Most Sacred Holiday
Someone once said okay, it wasn't someone, it was my mother; it wasn't "once," it was yesterday "today is my favorite American holiday of the year."
"What is it?" I asked, wondering if I'd somehow overlooked Arbor Day, or the rules for Thanksgiving had been changed overnight.
"It's the day after Election Day," said my mother. "A lot of people are happy and a lot of people are unhappy. But there is no blood in the streets. People are not shooting each other."
Very wise person, that someone.
It's become gospel at least among a large segment of the population (particularly the older) and the media (particularly the hysterical) that our political discourse is now simply much nastier than it's ever been, or at least than it was not that long ago. Washington is more sclerotic and vicious; no one listens to anyone else; etc., etc. When I suggest that this may not be the case, that it's not so horrible, others my age or older (not younger) look at me as if I'm trying to will it to be so; that anyone with a brain and a set of eyes can see I'm misguided.
Of course, to be perfectly blunt and non-partisan about it: They're wrong and I'm right. At least when it comes to a more sweeping view of American political history. In a panel onNewsHour with Jim Lehrer, the great presidential historian Michael Beschloss, talking about how Congress operates with its own, said, "the standard has changed and very much for the better. I think this is one of the happy stories about what's happened in American history. You look at this kind of punishment being considered for various members of the House and the Senate over 200 years. The interesting thing, you look at the 19th century and much of the 20th century, you don't see many people punished for financial malfeasance . . . . We know now that there have been members of the Senate, earlier in American history who were essentially owned by railroads, took briefcases full of cash. Their colleagues knew that they cast votes that were essentially paid for. That is something that in the 1990's is really very much a thing of the past. These people are so much under scrutiny by their colleagues, by their enemies in some cases, by the press." Mark Twain's comment that "there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress" did not arise out of thin air.
But wait, you may say. Beschloss made those comments way back in 1997. Things have deteriorated in the last 13 years. Plus, what Beschloss was saying may be good for accountability but not necessarily for the civility of discourse.
My response?
You hatchet-faced nutmeg dealer. That's what Stephen Douglas called his opponent, Abraham Lincoln, a century and a half ago.
Hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. That's what Thomas Jefferson's people called John Adams in the election of 1800.
A mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father. That was the response by Adams's supporters to Jefferson.
There are many more examples (many historians would vote for the 1828 tilt between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams as the all-time worst). Despite the hackneyed commentary by news anchors and short-sighted commentators that, no, really,thiselection season may well be "the nastiest in American history," it's very likely not true.
Now itis true that there have been "smear teams" in more recent presidential elections. In 1964, in 1972. It's true that in the year 2000, when the verdict on who would be our next president was not handed down for more than a month, tensions among fellow citizens ran unbelievably high.
But there was no post-election blood in the streets.
In many other countries, there is.
Amazingly, too, we are the country that has gathered people from more different places than any other. Ours is the biggest national polyglot that has ever been attempted. In other countries with numerous different ethnic, racial and religious groups, elections (and non-elections) don't go quite as non-violently as they do here.
It's the day after the day after. The Republic is still standing. So are its citizens. Without getting too self-congratulatory, we might well celebrate what it means to be right here, what it means to be right now. One might almost call it a holiday. Book a room in any of your favorite travel locations Relax On A Good Bedstead Father Time Recommends You Relax With Your Own Personal Zen Garden! Consider a Fantastic Summer time Holiday at Water Winnepesaukee Registrar Names and how they Differ by Country Come Spend the Holidays with El Portal Sedona Hotel Blind Lemon Jefferson King of the Country Blues Christmas Shopping in Ayr Denisonboston Looney Line Check Strip Cufflinks The Best Ideas for Christmas Hockey Girdles And The Comparison With Hockey Pants Components of Spring Pool Chemical Kits How to Improve Your American English Accent?