Photo by Getty Images.
“Did she make you cry
Make you break down
Shatter your illusions of love
And is it over now do you know how
To pick up the pieces and go home – Fleetwood Mac, “Gold Dust Woman,” Rumours, 1977
It’s been three weeks since the election that gave Republicans total control of government at both the federal and Montana state level. Three weeks of wailing and gnashing of teeth, recriminations, finger-pointing, blame-casting and endless hypothesizing about “what went wrong” with the Democrats (again).
The so-called pundits have blared out their endless analyses, the pollsters are shaking their heads in puzzlement (again), with some even throwing in the towel and quitting the prediction biz because they were so off-base.
And of course you have the pecking-order chicken fights in the Democratic Party itself. The “centrists” blame the left, the left blames the neoliberal centrists, the young blame the “ossified” leaders like Rep. Nancy Pelosi for failing to acknowledge and embrace generational change in the power structure. And everybody blames President Joe Biden for continuing to campaign with an obvious loss of ability due to advancing dementia.
Less written about is what effects the outcome and the post-election autopsies are having on the populace — half of which did not vote for Donald Trump. And make no mistake, those effects are real and they are not encouraging.
It’s quite common in conversations to hear people say “I spend a lot less time on the news now — it’s too much of a bummer.” Indeed it is, and the impacts are spreading far beyond unplugging from the roar of increasingly bad news.
Trump’s MAGA movement is riding high, taking heads, and fully embracing a shock and awe attack on long-standing governmental protocols, federal agencies, and even their employees.
Gone is the “consent and advise” function of the U.S. Senate to vet presidential appointments as the president-elect promises to make “recess appointments” when Congress is adjourned.
Those with any perception of the actual state of the quickly-degrading environment are in justified fear for the future with the increasing moves to discard science, gut regulatory agencies, and install corporate CEOs to oversee their own polluting industries. If anyone would like to know how that turns out, Montana provides an instructive answer. When CEOs and copper kings rans the state, the environment was damaged forever.
Hanging like the Sword of Damocles over all is the threat of retribution to any who dare challenge the mafia-like Don — and that threat and the fear it generates has spread far and wide, from the media to the GOP-controlled Congress to Democrat governors who might stand in the way of using the military to round up immigrants and their U.S.-born children and put them in internment camps prior to mass deportation.
Some may try to downplay them, but the impacts are having a profound effect. While some are vowing to fight, when the Republicans have the majorities, criticism of their policies, budgets, and actions have about as much impact as water rolling off a duck’s back. That’s not likely to change given they have the majorities and the votes.
Hence the emergence of a new and troubling attitude –The Great Disengagement. And who can blame non-Trumpers for refocusing their personal attention and resources away from the hopelessness of the political arena as the hapless Democrats squabble, unable to mount even a marginally effective counter?
Will it change as the bad news and worse decisions stack up? Perhaps.
But for now about half the populace is tired, disappointed, and facing the fact that resistance seems futile. And so The Great Disengagement continues to grow as people decide their best path going forward is simply to “pick up the pieces and go home.”