By Gregory Iwan
This is written for 2,284,967 voters, 1.48% of votes counted in the 2024 presidential election. “Opinion Polls,” if they mean anything, suggest 64% of us might like a “do-over.” I’d laugh, were it funny.
I’ve voted as an Independent since 1984. I’ve held liberal views and conservative. In 1978, I won a public debate upon the only occasion of which I’m aware, with Morris Udall, a notable Congressman from Arizona. I think I know conservatism. The real stuff. The kind of well-intended, hard-nosed, honestly value-laden, helpful, reliable, decent and tolerant life philosophy our fathers practiced. Folks who would give without a shakedown. Who would forgive a well-intentioned error that hurt no one.
Presidents preside; they don’t decide. Today, our national government operates by fiat, by decree. What comes from inside the Beltway shows us that a dictator — well, dictates. Much of what is decreed has little if anything to do with the country’s real problems or needs. Only one example is the decimation of the National Weather Service. Cuts to staffing there, ordered by the White House, may have come in response to NWS’ disagreement with, or discounting of, an attempt by the same chief executive to predict the movement of a hurricane by Sharpie (to Alabama). Is that why the U.S. Space Command is moving there? Perhaps we’ll see.
Remember the Constitution? U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd, Jr., carried a copy of it in his pocket every day he served. Byrd made mistakes; he was a rigid segregationist. Every U.S. administration has made mistakes. Show me any foreign government that hasn’t. But Lincoln’s “Of the people, By the people, For the people” is difficult to see in an Oval Office crammed with gold. That says “I’ve got it made, and you don’t or won’t.”
I got a personal, private tour of the White House on a Sunday in 1979. Carter’s term. The place was serene and ordinary, dignified, but conveying its importance as what was known as the “people’s house.” I imagine the Truman White House as simple, unadorned. “Give ‘em Hell Harry” had a famous slogan on his presidential desk. It said, “The buck stops here.” A President from the “show me” state of Missouri was a chief executive without retribution. He did fire General Douglas MacArthur and supervised the enactment of no-nonsense, budget-friendly measures to ensure recovery from a long, expensive war.
Now, deficit reduction is claimed but soon reversed. Reversals occur daily, whereby figurative cutting of throats is the apparent objective. Tech titans, whose company stocks travel higher than SpaceX boosters, stop by on Pennsylvania Avenue to kiss The Ring almost weekly. Hiring talented foreign workers will now cost them — big. I don’t recommend turning one’s back on the current occupant of that elliptical office.
The sitting chief seems bent on being everywhere, even (trying) to exert control over a New York City private vehicle congestion fee. Pride in each edict is evident as the large black scrawl on the day’s royal proclamation (or sentence) speaks of a paper proudly brought home from school for posting on the refrigerator.
Agriculture once was among our country’s biggest export categories. Now the labor our farmers depend on is being shipped away without any recognition of process. Supposedly, higher tariffs “balance” trade agreements made and honestly negotiated — not with a ball bat — over some ninety years. They’ve nearly become extinct now. If I were a foreign nation, I wouldn’t turn my back on the current boss man, either.
So, who are you, that 1.48% of the popular electorate who sent us here? What does it truly mean to be a “red state”? Once we heard, “Better red than dead.” But imagine the Hells Angels being in charge, the original “one percenters.” And those who voted for neither major party in 2024? Who wrote “Mickey Mouse”? Voted for “Who dat”? If those 2,284,967 had voted for the blue, the popular vote could have turned. Admittedly, the Electoral College is another matter.
We supposedly had a republic here. Levels and separation of powers. Checks and balances. But Congress and the Supreme Court have gone AWOL. Would you vote the same now? Time now not to laugh, but to cry.
Gregory Iwan lives in Longmont.