“I want to live in a world where a chicken can cross a road without his motives being questioned.” – Chicken Little

 From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

10 April

The 2016 Election and Chicken Little: The Good News

Do you remember the highly contentious election of 2016? We were divided into Deplorables and Nasties, right? Once the chief Deplorable won, the Nasties protested, “He’s not my President!” I’m sure we’d all agree that if the chief Nasty had won all the Deplorables would be protesting “She’s not my President!” In the midst of all that sound and fury it seemed as if we the people managed to negate the Constitution before the end of the very first sentence: “We the people, in order to form a more perfect union…” A more perfect WHAT? My guess is, none of us made any reference to what had happened to the Constitution – we were too swept up in Chicken Little’s frantic machinations: ‘ THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

Now, for the good news: 2016 isn’t the first time the sky fell; let’s look, would you believe, at the election of 1800. John Adams, a member of the fledgling Federalist Party, was running for a second term against his own Vice President Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republican Party, and the issues couldn’t have been more contentious. The world powers of the day were England and France. [The United States, an inconsequential string of former British colonies hugging the eastern seaboard of the North American continent with the same population as today’s San Francisco Bay Area, was NOT a world power.] Adams favored England as well as the business and financial interests of the North and East; by contrast, Jefferson favored France and the yoeman farmer of the South and West.

• Jefferson claimed disaster if Adams were elected: England, whom we had recently defeated in the Revolutionary War, was as supercilious and dangerous as ever; and besides, The Little Guy would get swallowed up by protective tariffs on all those goods manufactured by Adams’ wealthy cronies;
• Adams claimed disaster if Jefferson were elected: he’d import the French Revolution with its Reign of Terror; and besides, we needed those tariffs to protect a fledgling economy.

Would you believe, it got personal as well. Jefferson's camp accused Adams of having a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman." In return, Adams' people called Vice President Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father."

As the slurs piled on, Adams was labeled a fool, a hypocrite, a criminal, and a tyrant, while Jefferson was branded a weakling, an atheist, a libertine, and a coward. Even Martha Washington succumbed to the propaganda, telling a clergyman that Jefferson was "one of the most detestable of mankind."

Sound familiar? 2016 with its Deplorables and its Nasties sounds tame by comparison.

Conclusion: the choice in 1800 was pretty much the same as in 2016: pick your poison.

As it happened, the result was a tie in the Electoral College – the decision, according to the Constitution, was transferred to the House where Jefferson eeked out a victory on – would you believe? – the 36^th vote.

This was the fourth Presidential election in the history of this fledgling nation, and the first time there was what you might call a meaningful transfer of power. And that transfer set the tone for all future transfers: remarkably, it was peaceful! As Jefferson was to proclaim in his Inaugural Address, “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.” He even kept in office a generous number of Federalists from the previous administration.

Conclusion: Chicken Little was vanquished after the 1800 election; we need to insure he’s vanquished after the 2016 one!