Disappointing

The red tsunami turned out to be something of a bust. As of this writing, it appears that the GOP may have retaken the House, the Senate, maybe/maybe not. There is, once again, evidence of cheating - or "rigging" - on a systemic scale. 

When I lived in Fairfax, Va, I recollect seeing a little shop in a run-down strip mall that sold oriental rugs. For the dozen years we lived there, the place had a "Going Out of Business" sign hanging over the door; however, it never quite seemed to actually go out of business. Perhaps it has, by now, I don't know.

Lately, America has reminded me of that rug shop. We seem bound and determined to shut our Republic down, and fire-sale all of the traditions, customs and common beliefs that made this country great, and held it together for well over 200 years; yet, we never quite manage it. Our constitution, battered and besieged as never before, still stands, our liberties, though under constant assault by the growing body of totalitarians in our midst, are cherished and defended by tens of millions of citizens, the woke are now being challenged by the awakened as never before. So, as the song says, we're not broke, just badly bent.

But the question, at this stage, is how do we move forward? Can we vote our way out of our cultural and political rot? Yesterday's results do not lead to optimism. Perhaps the most ominous example of our plight was the victory of a brain-damaged no-account, who was a bum before he had his stroke, in the senate race in Pennsylvania. Simply astounding. Will democratic procedures survive Democrat control? Will the combination of true believers, clueless idiots, and co-opted federal law enforcement agencies and courts, along with the media (which now represents the nearest thing to a Democrat propaganda ministry that we've ever seen) spell the demise of our republic? 

For me, the touchstone of the best form of society is the degree of human liberty, and the goal is a nation in which personal freedom is secure against the depredations of the state, even if that state is supported by a majority. Whether such a society is maintained by the process of the ballot box, or by other means as yet to be determined, I hardly care any longer.

Update Saw this over at Instapundit in the comments section (which, overall, refreshingly lacks the defeatist, blame-Trump vibe of the blog, itself, today): 

"Annnnd back to the old days..."

That Republican "leadership" was a hundred times worse than Donald Trump, and a significant reason for Trump's inability to reestablish border integrity. The tendency of Crawl Ryan and that Boozer from Ohio to hide in the House coat closet when things got controversial was also a signal to Democrats that Trump was pretty much Gary Cooper in High Noon - he was on his own.

We want a fighter, not some aisle-reacher whose first instinct is to compromise. If it isn't Trump or DeSantis, who else will it be?

Update II  I should have said, we need a party of fighters, not just the person at the top.