The Happy Dance

Maybe I shouldn’t be doing the happy dance.

Will the United States curtail its trade in death and destruction around the world? There’s no guarantee of that. The track record of the Democrats is hardly better than that of the Republicans. For examples from recent history, we only have to look at Clinton’s terrorist actions against Sudan and Yugoslavia (the latter case including actions in which my country took part, I’m ashamed to say).

And the Democrats, no less than the Republicans, are ultimately propped up by corporate interests, so progressive economic reforms will consist of baby steps at best, with even those baby steps being far from guaranteed. Don’t expect anything resembling universal health care in the US in the next four years.

So why is last night’s electoral result something to be happy about? Not because of any great probability of significantly better policies coming from Washington. I’m not that optimistic. Rather, the result is something to be happy about because of what it says about the people of the United States.

It’s like this. The Dems, for all their faults, at least tend to say the right things. Sometimes. The Republicans, by contrast, tend more toward open, blatant evil.

As an (admittedly imperfect) analogy, compare two men whom I’ll call Dennis and Roger. Dennis appears to be a nice guy. He says all the right things in public. People like him. But he’s a rotten hypocrite: He regularly beats his wife. He keeps it a secret, though. So we can forgive his friends for being his friends. Roger, on the other hand, is not a hypocrite at all. Instead, he’s a bit of a psychopath. He beats his wife openly, and thinks there’s nothing wrong with it. Nor do his friends see a problem.

Who is worse? They’re both awful. But whose friends are worse? That’s the question. Dennis’s friends can be forgiven easily, on the grounds of ignorance. But what about Roger’s friends? What’s their excuse?

You may focus on the parties or the leaders, if you like. For the moment, I’m just focusing on the voters – on Dennis’s friends and Roger’s friends, as it were.

And last night shows that Americans can be good folks after all. Something resembling moral sanity has prevailed in their country. A clear majority turned against the Party for Perpetual War.

And that’s why I’m doing the happy dance.