Election Suspense
—————————
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find?
Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant Mind?
Samuel Johnson, "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
At the time of writing in late August, the coming U.S. election is hard to call, so that dull Suspence must indeed prevail for a few more weeks. One need not let it corrupt one's mind, though; nor is there ever any excuse for one's mind to be stagnant. What can citizens of a conservative temperament reasonably hope for from the election? Is there anything they should reasonably fear?
So far as the immediate result of the election is concerned, there are three big headline possibilities: a Democratic victory, a Republican victory, or chaos.
To take that last possibility first, by chaos I mean an indeterminate result: neither party willing to admit defeat, with weeks — perhaps months — of political paralysis and social disorder. The idiosyncracies of the U.S. voting system more or less guarantee such a result when the race is very close … …
… … …
[Read the entire article in the October 2020 issue of Chronicles.]