Familiarity, even with a pandemic, breeds contempt – Possibility of acceleration of lawsuits against Trump – Abortion and the mid-term elections – The relative sedateness of the midterm elections – Evening statistics
It will be observed that the intervals between journal entries are becoming longer. Part of the reason is the number of hikes I’ve been leading over the past several months. It is time-consuming to prepare for them (including the scouting for them that is involved) and on the days of the hikes themselves I often feel too tired to write after the hikes are completed and I have driven back home. But there is also psychological fatigue to reckon with as well. When I first began the idea of striving against the ravages of a steadily increasing epidemic was at any rate a source of stimulation. But when a plague or a war drags on for months and years, without any noticeable change from one day to the next, a reaction of indifference, or at any rate a nullification of the intensity of one’s earlier emotional response, can set in. In Aldous Huxley’s “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan,” which is set in 1939, as the state of the world was worsening on a daily basis, the reaction of one character to a news headline announcing yet another international misfortune must have been typical of many living through that dismal time: “’Franco claims gains in Catalonia,’ Jeremy read, and turned away. The frightfulness of the world had reached a point at which it had become for him merely boring.” In the early stages, when we were devising methods to combat the pandemic both through technological advances and the institution of various social measures, was in an odd way inspiriting; our current state of passively waiting for it to become a pandemic no longer is – not to put too fine a point on it – dull.
Something similar must be said about the ongoing saga of the momentum of the various cases levied against Donald Trump is supposedly attaining. The Democrats have performed better than expected during the midterm elections and Trump will not be receiving the protection he hoped to receive from an overwhelmingly Republican Congress, so perhaps prosecutors will feel more emboldened to bring him to court – but what a time they’ve taken about it! After all, many of the rioters who attacked the Capitol have been charged and are serving time by now. Several of them have been formally convicted of sedition. It is high time that the principal person concerned in setting up the riot be brought to book as well.
Speaking of midterm elections – abortion played a significant role in them. Five states voted on changes to abortion rules. Vermont, California, and Michigan all voted in favor of including the right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution. In Kentucky, the question was the opposite: whether or not to specifically exclude the right to abortion in the state constitution. This measure was rejected by a narrow margin. In Montana the issue is somewhat more convoluted. Voters were not asked about abortion directly. Instead they were asked to decide on a so-called “born alive” measure that would guarantee any newborn infant, even those born as a result of abortion, the right to medical care that will preserve life and would criminalize health care providers who do not make every effort to save such an infant’s life – a measure that would obviously discourage providers from attempting abortions. As of this writing, the measure appears on the verge of being defeated. The majority of Americans, it is clear, do not wish the government to meddle in such matters; and it is to be hoped that the Republicans will get the message and stop adhering to a policy that is clearly untenable in the long run.
On the whole, midterm elections have gone more smoothly than I would have predicted. Candidates on both sides have conceded when it became apparent that they failed to obtain a superior number of voters to that of their rivals. There were no large-scale displays of violence and – so far at least – no one is initiating lawsuits claiming that an election was “stolen” from him. So perhaps my fears about the damage that Trump has inflicted on our electoral process have been gratifyingly wrong; the electoral contests of 2022 have been, to put it mildly, much more decorous than those of 2020.
Today’s statistics as of 10:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 638,843,596; # of deaths worldwide: 6,609,952; # of cases U.S.: 99,809,767; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,099,494.