A mid-morning visit – Voting by mail – The transition to the new administration – Evening statistics.
The weather was warm enough to enable EG and HG to have me over to take coffee with them in their spacious and scenic backyard. Here I went with EG to look at the koi in the fish pond, which were testifying to their enjoyment of the warmth by swimming energetically, sometimes creating little ripples in the water whenever they came close to the surface. Then we sat and drank and snacked on scones and cookies, and we discussed the ongoing transition and the manner in which the electoral process has stood firm despite its current trials. As HG pointed out, the judicial system upheld the voting process in an admirable fashion, tossing out lawsuits that had no evidence to back their claims and not hesitating to remind lawyers of the penalties attached to bringing frivolous lawsuits to the courts. We agreed, also, that the process of voting by mail is a great benefit. I for one will probably not vote in person again, since voting by mail is so much easier. For example, if the ballot contains a voting option for an amendment one has not heard of before (a frequent experience in past visits to the polling station), it is now possible to make inquiries about the issue at one’s leisure before committing oneself to a decision of how to vote on it. The lawsuits might even be beneficial in the long run, uncovering isolated errors here and there, and thereby allowing us to correct them and to streamline the process. It is not the effect that Trump intended, but at any rate he can claim that his attempts to challenge the results have not been without impact.
So far Biden deserves a great deal of credit for the way he is handling the transition. Without making any kind of outcry against the attempts to cheat him of his victory, he has displayed an impressive degree of quiet confidence and has refrained from abusing his political opponents, solely tempted as he must have been to do. Many of the career civil servants who had suffered under the Trump regime and who in some cases have been forced out of their positions now have a hope of restoration to normalcy. For example, Linda Thomas-Greenfield is a 35-year veteran of the State Department who had resigned at Trump’s behests and who afterwards wrote bitterly about the damage he was inflicting on the department as a whole. Now she will be serving as the U.S Ambassador to the United Nations. The State Department in particular has suffered greatly under the current administration, losing numerous senior people and not obtaining anyone with an equivalent amount of experience and expertise to replace them. But others have lost people in crucial positions as well: the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and so on. It is impossible to describe the relief one feels, after witnessing the four year-long saturnalia of hiring and firing under the current administration, fueled principally by the criterion of loyalty to an unbridled egomaniac, upon seeing the formation of a governmental team superintended by mature adults.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 60,715,397; # of deaths worldwide: 1,426,730; # of cases U.S.: 13,137,962; # of deaths; U.S.: 268,219. At this point our rate of infection is 4% of the national population.