An Answer to a Personal Political Question?

 Answer: Will Rogers?

I consider myself a Democrat, but I feel wholly detached from the zealotry approaching the religious for my favored political party. Since I was 18, I have thought of the Democrats as the least dangerous of our political parties. Lately, I have wondered why I do not feel this urge for vociferous ideology. No one in my family was that ideological, My father's Aunt Elsie voted straight-ticket Republican and was outspokenly in favor of abortion and legalized gambling. My mother's sister told me she would vote for a Socialist party if we had one, and behaved like a Republican. My father's vote for President went to whoever he thought would be good for business,

Well, I think Steven Watts's View politics critically but charitably and with good old common sense: cowboy commentator Will Rogers’ wisdom for 2024 points me toward an answer. The newspaper still reprinted Rogers when I was a kid, so I was exposed to him. But there was a skepticism in my relatives towards politicians. They did not look to them to save them. They did not see the end of the Republic if their candidate lost (even my anti-FDR relatives did not go that far). They would have laughed any candidate away who claimed they were coming to save the country.

Yet Rogers insisted that political disputation should be kept in perspective. He urged his fellow citizens to avoid politicizing every public issue and instead concentrate on more meaningful endeavors – family, friends, community and work.

Despite the dire warnings of political zealots, he said, “There is no less sickness, no less Earthquakes, no less Progress, no less inventions, no less morality, no less Christianity under one (president) than the other.”

But for Rogers, the ultimate guarantee of stability came from the mass of workaday American citizens seeking commonsense solutions to public problems. What Rogers called the “Big Honest Majority” lived simply and worked hard, wanted a good life for their families and pursued their own version of happiness.

The average citizen, Rogers believed, had solid judgment and “was not simple minded enough to believe that EVERYTHING is right and doesn’t appear to be cuckoo enough to believe that EVERYTHING is wrong.”

Maybe it is time for the rest of you to listen to Mr. Rogers:

So when you hear overwrought partisans lamenting “the end of democracy” or “we won’t have a country left anymore,” take a deep breath and consider Will Rogers’ calmer, wiser approach to presidential elections a century ago. Remember his conclusion that America won’t be ruined “no matter who is elected, so the Politicians will have to wait four more years to tell us who will ruin us then.”

We have had enough crazy viciousness.

sch 10/6