Like most Americans for much of the last six months my passive news feeds have flooded my retinas with political punditry. Moreover, the algorithms that made the founders of FB and Google wealthy beyond all imagination, selected which ones came before me. And I selected my favorites, two of them, in the guise of objective analysts, knowing that they had the same party affiliation as me with the same centrist position within it. Those to the left of me almost never got opened, those much to the right rarely appeared as an option on my laptop or big-screen TV. The algorithms predicted that I needed mostly to validate myself. Partly true, but as our sage Ben Zoma noted, wise people learn from the spectrum of those in the ecosystem. I still aspire to become wise, but FB and Google prefer the shield.
Some experiences immerse me outside my safe space. I do the family grocery shopping roughly weekly. While at Shop-Rite I don't pay attention to who else rolls their cart or what they buy. Much more likely to see caps and t-shirts with local team insignia than political statements. I don't have any concern over who puts cheap stuff in their cart, who goes for convenience food, and who, other than me, gravitates to the shelf of reduced baked goods near the registers. I know for sure that the cost of what I purchase has risen. While my financial position will not change from what I purchase at the supermarket, I forgo things that exceed what I am willing to pay.
I fill my gas tank. Now that I no longer commute forty minutes each way, those fill-ups have greatly decreased in frequency. As I move upward in my senior years, my desire for a 50-100 mile spontaeous day trip has plummeted. Yet I maintain the ability to get where I want to go, which means a regular supply of gasoline. Filling the tank costs more. I will even now drive a little extra to save 10 cents a gallon, or just over a dollar per refuel.
Having invested regularly for my adult life, stock market appreciation has more than offset rising consumer prices for me, a judicious consumer. That's probably not the case for people in early career who need food and fuel this week, but will not need their 401k to compound for many decades.
My daily email from eJPhil announces donors of millions to Jewish causes on a daily basis. I get it. As a high schooler, I had to present to the class a summary of Andrew Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth. No question that a few people building public projects of a grand nature gives a better opportunity for those elsewhere on the wealth spectrum than giving everybody smaller subsidy. But to build a middle class, which fuels economic activity, people need secure wages. That's why American economic booms took place in the mid-20th century and why Asian consumers now see their purchasing power accelerating. So I don't resent the megadonations to Jewish agencies or endowments to universities from grateful alumni who owe their success to the education they received at those campuses.
Those news feeds. Polling presented as a horse race. Just like race horses, there is some justification for anticipating results, though enough uncertainty to dismiss one bobtail nag or one candidate out of hand. Predictions had a consistency, as my preferred YouTube channels presented them. A preference of voters for Democrats in Congressional Districts and in States. Trend lines of opinions shown frequently with widening gaps over time between the two parties in aggregate and to a large extent the individual candidates who carried the banners. Partisans who preferred a different outcome either conducted their own surveys or criticized the validity of what mainstream media and sophisticated, objective sampling revealed. By the final few days, I got tired of this clutter in my YouTube feed, opening the two I respected, then scrolling to other YouTube channels for Thanksgiving recipes or videos of some of my chronic health conditions.
Ultimately, people figured out that the three minutes each of us have in the privacy of a voting booth or mailbox would serve as a referendum on the sitting President, with his surrogates taking the brunt of the results. Mostly a negative consensus was anticipated and realized when the overwhelming, unequivocal counts came in.
Punditry works in prediction and in retrospect. The previous verdict of the voters had only been two years before , also with a very consistent though less dramatic result. Majorities implement their preferences. Minority views endure what they must but do not give up their chance to assess the outcome.
Financial burdens dominated the voters' minds. Many, including me, also had to make an ethical decision. James Madison in The Federalist Papers devoted many paragraphs to protecting people from getting overwhelmed by venal officeholders and the factions they could create. He thought his Constitution would minimize that outcome. What we experienced with the current majority are enablers of conduct that honorable parents teach their children to avoid. Demeaning speech has been prohibited by Jewish sages for millennia. Trampling vulnerable people has its prohibitions, though the Prophets recognize and express displeasure at its being violated. We place Derech Eretz, civility leading to cordial relations, as a primary value. The people we hold in highest esteem, other than parents, are those memorable teachers and mentors who extended generosity to us personally when we were nobodies. All violated by the governing majority, with many victims. Moreover, many rationalized this falsely as virtue: Respecting understandable immigration statutes, assuring that funds directed to the needy don't support those who could be more independent, Biblical mandates even as the churches decline in attendance and affiliation. Too often, the illusion of virtue. People can figure out that masked goons rounding up people who pose no threat belonged in another era. We've had enough wars for citizens to realize that if you are not All In for a cause, as WW2, it's better not to be in at all.
The voters not only opted for lower prices, I think we made a statement supporting more respectable people to represent us. The subtle racists did poorly. People were more than willing to vote for candidates of color, sexual minorities, a fair number of physicians, and a few Islamists. Seats at a table bring conflict, but they avoid tyrannies of the majority and minimize those more intent on manipulating or domineering. It can be messy, result in stalemates, and generate future resentments. A prudent risk. And it doesn't avoid the trap of mingling virtue with the illusion of virtue. But a decisive expression of voter dissatisfaction. The validity of what replaces it remains on the table.
