Thursday hopium

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

— Winston Churchill

As I wrote on Monday:

I don't want to harsh anyone's buzz. But I believe we must be clear-eyed in what we must face. There are no easy solutions. A Democratic tsunami in November is simply not the end of things. It's barely the end of the beginning.

I still stand by that. What we are engaged in is a long, twilight struggle. Fascism wasn't defeated in the Second World War. It was merely driven underground. Racism wasn't defeated in the 1960s. White America simply bided its time. The Shadow never vanishes, for the Shadow is part of Arda Marred.

But we may be seeing the end of the beginning of this cycle of history.

This week's YouGov generic ballot poll had this to say:

Likely voters prefer Democratic candidates over Republican candidates by 16 points in the November congressional elections, their largest lead in any Economist / YouGov Poll this year so far. 53% of likely voters prefer the Democratic candidate and 38% prefer the Republican candidate; the lead is calculated by subtracting those percentages before rounding them.

This 16-point Democratic lead among likely voters is far larger than their 6-point lead among currently registered voters, or the 9-point Democratic lead among voters who are either registered to vote or say they will register by Election Day.

This was followed by Quinnipiac:

Five weeks until Election Day, 51 percent of voters would want to see the Democratic Party win control of the United States House of Representatives, while 39 percent would want to see the Republican Party win control of the House, with 9 percent not offering an opinion, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll among registered voters released today.

This compares to Quinnipiac's September 10 poll, when 49 percent of voters wanted to see the Democratic Party win control of the House, 38 percent wanted to see the Republican Party win control of the House, and 13 percent did not offer an opinion.

In today's poll, among independents, 54 percent would want to see the Democratic Party win control of the House and 30 percent would want to see the Republican Party win control of the House, with 17 percent not offering an opinion.

 

And the screenshot fronting this piece? This was a text I received. I usually delete these texts, or send them to spam. I don't know if the Universal Monad moved me to actually open it and look at it, but I did, and was greeted with that information. Nebraska. 

Again, let me make this clear: Even a crushing Democratic victory won't be the end of things. Too many on our side see victories like that and decide that the job is done and they need do nothing else. That's not the way anything in life works. If you buy a beautiful, modern home, but then don't do maintenance work, it will soon fall to wrack and ruin. Barack Obama was elected with the refrain that we are the hope we've been seeking; too many ignored that, and turned against him in 2010 because he hadn't fixed everything in barely two years in office. We cannot, we must not, repeat that mortal error. Our opponents know about the long game. They've been playing it ever since the Civil Rights Act. They've been playing it ever since the Scopes trial. They've been playing it ever since the Civil War. They've been playing it since the arrival of the Mayflower.

So, yes. Take hope from these data points. Take courage. Take strength. But remember this: the price of liberty and freedom is constant watchfulness and struggle. As we've seen over the past ten years, without that the Republic will fall to ruin, as would a beautiful home unmaintained. This doesn't mean we must always be in paranoia. It means that we must do the work of democracy. We must be active, aware, and, dare I say, woke. Woke to what the enemies of democracy always hatch in their darkness. Woke to the systems which can be turned to oppression. Woke to the fact that the malefactors of great wealth see democracy as a hindrance to their interests. An entire societal reset needs to occur. One in which we as human beings come to realize that wealth is not the measure of a man. That decency should be the metric by which anyone is judged. Don't tell me how much you own; tell me what you have done for your fellow. That won't be solved by one election, or ten. It will only be solved by a spiritual and philosophical enlightenment which is vastly overdue.

But. This is a good start.