There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.
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Will Rogers
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Rock, Return, Release, Rocked
1492: The oldest meteorite with a known date of impact struck a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim, Alsace, France.
1504: Christopher Columbus returned from his fourth and final voyage.
1775: John Murray, the Royal Governor of the Colony of Virginia, started the first mass emancipation of slaves in North America by offering freedom to slaves who abandoned their colonial masters to fight on the British side during the Revolution.
1940: The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a windstorm a mere four months after completion.
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Don’t Kill Yourself
As Donald Trump appeared to be winning last night, the number of Twitterers who proclaimed a hankering or a design to kill themselves rose dramatically. Michael Malice and others found humor in it, but it’s a super-saddening development, if you ask me.
These Kamala Harris voters are not really going to kill themselves. It is just something to say on Twitter.
I really hope I’m not wrong about this.
I’ll leave to others the counsel of life. That is the job of friends and family and emergency hotline dispatchers. My counsel is different: talking about suicide because your candidate lost is undemocratic. If the authoritarian pronouncements of both major candidates alarmed you about the danger of anti-democratic trend, this fad should raise the alarm several decibels.
The whole point of democracy is to allow a transition of power sans bloodshed. And that requires both contenders and supporters not to shed each other’s blood … or their own. When they fail.
It’s a requirement. Not to over-react.
The losers have to accept the loss, and the winners have to refrain from using the state to punish the losers further.
It’s sort of that simple.
Resignation is key, as scientist Lawrence M. Krauss (@LKrauss1) indicated: “Going to bed, reasonably resigned to Trump win at this point as it seemed to me from a distance for some time. He may be a nut, a liar, and a crook, but the bright side is a likely boost free speech and due process at unis and bump in tech sector, if we survive the rest.”
We will survive. If Trump wins the Electoral Vote (I’m going to bed, too, before a final determination), or if Harris does.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer, “The New Toryism,” The Man Versus the State (1884).
If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves?
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Gandhi Arrested
On November 6, 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
Tonight — or hopefully sometime before Christmas — we will know who the next president of these United States shall be.
I’m also anxious to find out who wins control of the U.S. Senate and House — and most excited to see the outcome of 11 statewide ballot measures that I’ve been engaged in — across ten states, including eight states with Citizen Only Voting Amendments on the ballot, most critically North Carolina and Wisconsin.
But my elation in expectation on this fine day is greatly tempered by the sobering reality that awaits on Wednesday. No matter who wins … something approaching half the country will be deeply distraught.
I’m tired of hearing that America is “over” — that this experiment in freedom and democracy has run its course and is destined to soon fail. But on Wednesday I’ll no doubt hear that chorus again from the losing side.
No one gets a prize for predicting America’s demise — only for preventing it.
What worries me most, however, are the challenges Wednesday’s winner will face from a world at war in Europe and the Middle East, with conflict rapidly approaching in Asia.
“World War III,” as columnist George Will wrote weeks ago, “has begun.”*
Yet, the election has been largely devoid of serious foreign policy discussion. “The U.S. presidential campaign is what reckless disregard looks like,” quipped Will. “Neither nominee has given any evidence of awareness of, let alone serious thinking about, the growing global conflagration.”
Whoever wins today (or whenever): Buckle your seatbelts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Mr. Will believes history will look back to mark the beginning of the Third World War with “Russia’s 2014 seizure of Crimea,” during the Obama administration.
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