The Day After

I'm writing this blog during Election Day 2026 even as I don't intend to publish it until the day after. Why? Because no one will listen to it as we vote. Likely as not neither will they afterwards, but such is life.

The key mistake we make in politics is in making our politicians heroes. They are not, nor can they be. At least, not the great many of them. In my life I would count only Ronald Reagan in that category at a national level, though I am fond Margaret Thatcher too. I do like Javier Milei in Argentina based on what he's done so far. Yet it's too early in history to foist a crown upon him. Sorry, Trump supporters. I've been happy overall with him, yes, but he carries a lot, an incredible amount indeed, of baggage. It is a challenge to support him let alone think the man heroic.

To the point. Our politicians are human beings besieged by hundreds of others in their milieu. Can we expect heroism? Should we? Every candidate asserts in one way or another that they will make our lives better. Will circumstances let them? And why should we believe they're so damn much better for us than the folks we meet in our everyday lives anyway? 

The people I meet day in and day out treat me better than any politician ever will. I offer the grocer money and he gives me food. I pay my power bill and get electricity. Conversely, customers give me money, and I give them a chance to make a living. So begins a tremendously long list if I should choose to write it all out. But the point is this. We do not need the government for it to happen. We simply need people free to pursue their interests.

Government cannot provide that. Yet it can provide for a society in which it may happen. It can get the hell out of our way. No one I saw on the ballot seemed particularly interested in that, although I will be vaguely partisan and argue that the Republicans are generally better in at least talking the talk. But not by much. Not enough to get excited about it, anyway. Talk, as always, is cheap. That's why politicians deal in it.

But, whatever. Reagan is right, and Mamdani in New York emphatically wrong. Government is not the solution. It is the problem. Until we start voting with that thought paramount, we get what we deserve.