AN APPOSITE QUESTION FOR OUR TIMES.

Reason's Steven Greenhut, trapped in California where the only things spreading more rapidly than executive orders are civil disobedience, people leaving the state, and coronavirus infections.  "How many people think this not-particularly magical thing called 'government' has calmly guided us through the coronavirus crisis?"

I don't, but mine is not the majority position either in Illinois, or in the national government, where the party of more government is in charge.

Every time the Democrats manage to pick the country’s various electoral locks and find themselves in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, they tell themselves it’s 1932. The People have spoken and they want Profound and Lasting Change!

No, they don’t. They didn’t in 2008, when Americans were angry and frustrated about the Iraq War, terrified about the economy, and inclined to inflict severe punishment on anyone with an (R) after his name for his role in both calamities. Almost immediately after Barack Obama took office, however, the reasons he won ceased to resonate: By the time he learned how to work his phone, the recession was over, and the war became a distant memory. So Mr. Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste began shoving through a massive new entitlement/health-care reform that the people didn’t want, Congress turned sharply against him in response, and he spent the next six years caviling about Republican “obstructionism,” as though the Republicans blocking his agenda were not elected specifically and clearly to thwart him.

That's still true now. Incoming president^* Joe Biden is not Donald Trump. He's not much of anything else, either, and it might behoove him to behave accordingly.

Donald Trump, who was elected president in 2016 at a moment when he had an approval rating of 37 percent, won mainly because he was not Hillary Clinton. And Joe Biden very obviously won by not being Trump.

The Republican Party famously has no agenda besides tax cuts. So what? Another way of phrasing that is that the Republican Party thinks the country is fundamentally fine, and in no need of being remade into a European social democracy. The Democrats fall asleep each night fantasizing about reengineering the energy sector, redistributing wealth, and rebuilding every institution with “social justice” and racial preferences foremost in mind. They will win America’s support for all of this only in their dreams.

The way out might be for the Party of More Government to dial it back. "One important step would be to make elections less consequential so that Americans aren't so fearful of the instruments of government in the hands of their enemies."  That's unlikely, but J. D. Tuccille concedes the wisdom of the Tenth Amendment.

So, while we're expanding the realm of human life that's beyond the reach of government, much of what it does should be devolved down the political food chain, closer to the people who are affected, to reduce the likelihood of subjecting them to policies they despise. Ideally, as much decision-making as possible should be returned to individuals.

None of this guarantees that the Trumpists who stormed the Capitol, or any other Americans who no longer believe in the peaceful transition of power, will suddenly regain faith in vote counts. But making election wins and losses less important should lower the political tensions that are consuming the country. And that might give us all a little necessary breathing room while we figure out, once again, how to get along with one another.

Politics divides, and having as little of it as is practicable well might make sense.