One of the reasons I believe Donald Trump will win the election on Tuesday is that there has been a cascade of failures by the government and the ruling party, as well as by those who claim to speak for it.
You could feel this in 2020, too, when Trump contracted COVID in the first week of October. He recovered, and nearly won the election (yes, I know he thinks he actually did win it), but one could sense it possibly slipping away in that moment.
There's just this phenomenon that ruling parties tend to fail as Election Day gets closer. It's partly a result of media scrutiny, but also seems to be the result of some kind of hidden force, perhaps society's way of telling itself to change.
I first noticed this in 2006, when I was helping Helen Zille's mayoral campaign in Cape Town. For months, Helen had argued that the city had been diverting money from emergency services to public housing as a kind of Potemkin policy.
Then, in the days before the election, a British tourist flicked a cigarette into the brush on Table Mountain and the whole dry mountainside exploded in fire. Lo and behold -- there weren't enough firefighting vehicles, due to budget cuts.
There were also blackouts -- the first of South African's infamous electricity shortages. These were caused by failures in the turbines at the nearby nuclear power plant, which the government blamed on sabotage, but they were also the result of overly aggressive affirmative action policies denuding the country of engineers. All of this fit within the opposition's critique of the government.
I remember walking home from the South African Parliament that day, looking at the orange sun barely peeking through the smoke, and thinking that events were pointing in the direction of an opposition victory. Things had to change.
And they did: the opposition went on to win the city, and has held it since.
Everything is going wrong for the Biden-Harris administration and the Kamala Harris campaign in the last week. Biden's "garbage" comment; Mark Cuban's disparaging comments about conservative women; all of it. These are signs.
I think that the country has already decided that Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office, the first to return after losing a reelection race since Grover Cleveland in 1892. You can feel the country making the collective decision.
Here in my largely-liberal part of the world, you can sense the frustration of some people. I overheard a guy yesterday lamenting the fact that the election would be decided by "non-college educated white men in Pennsylvania." Yep.
That's how it works. In a democracy, the people rule, and not the elites. The elites have a role, but it must also have boundaries. It's time for the elites to learn that -- and then, hopefully, long-overdue healing can begin in the USA.
This week’s portion launches the great story of Abraham, who is told to leave everything of his life behind — except his immediate family — and to leave for “the Land that I shall show you.”
There’s something interesting in the fact that Abraham is told to leave his father’s house, as if breaking away from his father’s life — but his father, in fact, began the journey, moving from Ur to Haran (in last week’s portion). His father set a positive example — why should Abraham leave him?
Some obvious answers suggest themselves — adulthood, needing to make one’s own choices, his father not going far enough, etc.
But I think there is another answer. Abraham (known for the moment as Abram) needs to establish his own household. This is not just about making one’s own choice, but really about choosing one’s own starting point. It’s starting over.
Sometimes we start over in fundamental ways even if much that surrounds us remains the same. Sometimes the journey we have to ...
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
