Now that the mid-term elections are over, for the next 18 months what should we expect? Gas prices will shoot back up to $5 per gallon. Joe Biden’s plan has always been to run fossil fuels out of business by driving up the price at the pump, but he needed gas prices to be low for the 6 months leading up to the mid-terms so the voters wouldn’t take it out on Democrats at the ballot box. In the near future, paying sub $4 for a gallon of gas will recede into the distant past until the spring of 2024 when Biden will spend taxpayer money to fly around the world visiting brutal dictators and beg them to produce more oil for 6 months so the Democrats can fool their constituency once again, and get re-elected. Until then you will hear a lot about climate change, net-zero carbon-emissions, windmills, solar panels, electric cars, and of course, ‘saving the planet’ which means lining the pockets of the donor class.
For the next 18 months, we will not hear one Democrat politician in Washington mention violent crime in our major cities. For all the lip service they gave during their campaigns to stop violent crime, they will never mention it again for 18 months. Democrats only spoke about crime this election cycle because many of their constituents live in war zones and they feared that their voters may cast their ballot for the politician who did speak out against violent crime because most voters are tired of young kids being gunned down in our streets, girls being raped, women being pushed in front of subway cars, people being carjacked, and stores being looted. Democrats will go back to pretending that crime doesn’t exist, and anyone who suggests that it does, is a racist. We will hear a lot about cashless bail, overcrowded prisons, equity in the justice system, racist cops, defunding the police, and gun control. So, not only will nothing be done to reduce violent crime, they will put in policies which will enable and increase violent crime.
Words that Democrat politicians won’t say for the next 18 months are open borders, illegal immigration, fentanyl, and drug cartels. They will pretend that the border is completely secure, that 5 million illegal immigrants, mostly single males between the ages of 15 to 30, have not walked into our country in the last 21 months. They will ignore the 100,000 American citizens who died of drug overdoses in the year 2022 because of the fentanyl that was carried across our open southern border. They don’t care. All they care about is power, and if importing 5 million illegals into our country helps them win future elections, they are all for it regardless of the hundreds of thousands of American deaths it causes. We will hear a lot about protecting Ukraine’s border because if people from another country cross that border, worldwide Democracy is threatened, but no mention of the invasion at the United States southern border.
Over the next 18 months, we will not hear one Democrat politician speaking about inflation, not one. It doesn’t matter to them that the dozen eggs that cost $1.79 twenty-one months ago, now costs over $5.00, or your Thanksgiving turkey that cost $1.29 per pound two Thanksgivings ago, now costs over $2.00 per pound. It doesn’t matter to them that we are paying over $200 for the same amount of groceries that cost us a little over $100 less than two years ago. It doesn’t matter to them that interest rates are at a 20 year high and a young couple’s hope of buying a home is now out of reach as is their prospect of realizing the American dream.
We will hear a lot about trans-rights though, as well as radical gender theory, Critical Race Theory, systemic racism, reparations, all things that they failed to mention during their campaigns and do absolutely nothing to solve the basic problems facing the average American. Is one poor person going to be any less poor because of who we elected yesterday? Is any citizen going to be any safer because of who we elected yesterday? Will buying the necessities of life be more affordable because of who we elected yesterday? Is one fewer person going to die of a drug overdose because of who we elected yesterday? No, no, no, and no.
This election cycle over $16 billion was spent on political campaigns, and very little of what was said in any of those campaigns was true. It was a 6-month long exercise of telling the voters what they want to hear with little intention of doing any of it if they are elected. It was $16 billion spent to lie to the American people, and the people who were the best and most gifted liars, got elected. And we scratch our heads and wonder why our country is falling apart at the seams, and why nothing ever gets done to solve our problems.
This entire drawn-out process was not about what is best for our country and its citizens; it was about who gets to control how the government spends 4.5 trillion of our tax dollars. It was the process of deciding which of our elected officials are going to divvy up $4.5 trillion among the people who paid the bulk of the $16 billion that got them elected. And if you didn’t donate at least $10,000 to a political campaign of someone who won, you’re out of luck. We just have to go back to work and pay our taxes which will go to benefit those who did donate the big dollars. Big campaign donors do not donate that much money out of the goodness of their hearts or because they love America or they want to do right for the American citizens. Large campaign contributions are investments. The deep pocket donors expect to get their donations back ten-fold. The donors who do not get a return on their donations are those who donate $10, $20 or even $100. They are immediately forgotten until the next election cycle when the same politicians who ignored you for 18 months want more of your hard-earned money so they can get re-elected, so they can ignore you all over again.
The United States government is the biggest scam ever perpetrated on any group of people in the history of the world, bar none. Not even close. And every two years, we play the game. We become invested in the outcomes of these elections. We become emotional, and sometimes enraged. Friends are lost. Families are divided. We yell. We scream. We accuse. We condemn. All because of which one of the ego-maniacal, fast talking, corrupted politicians each one of us is supporting.
I did some errands yesterday morning, on election day. I went to several stores and was greeted with, “good morning”, “how are you?”, “hope you’re doing well”, “have a blessed day”. I didn’t know any of those people. I didn’t know what their politics were. They could have been Republicans. They could have been Democrats. They could have been Independents. It didn’t matter. They were human beings just trying to live their lives and be good people. And they are. I shouldn’t hate any of those people if they happened to vote for a different candidate than I did. We have to stop listening to the media or social media telling us that the person who voted for the other guy is the devil. They’re not. There may be devils walking among us, but they are not devils because of who they did or did not vote for.
I don’t know if there was a red wave or not, yesterday. And really, I don’t care. It must tell us something that the party that is declared the winner in one election cycle is usually the loser in the next election cycle. It means that most politicians are much better at campaigning than they are at governing, very few end up doing what they campaigned on mainly because they spend their time and political capital paying back their donors rather than fulfilling their campaign promises to the average American citizen. That’s why they have to spend millions and millions of dollars on their campaigns to convince you that what you witnessed them doing for the last two years they really didn’t do. They didn’t cause the crime problem; they didn’t cause inflation; they didn’t create the energy crisis; they didn’t cause the fentanyl crisis; they didn’t cause our real wages to go down. They need all that campaign money so they can convince us that even though they had all the power the last two years, none of the problems we are dealing with is their fault, but if we give them the power once again, they will fix the problems they are claiming they were powerless to solve in their previous term. And we nod along like bobble heads. And re-elect them.
In the next few days, you will hear a lot of talk about “messaging”, “talking points” and “narrative”. Those things determined the outcomes of these elections. Those words are just euphemism for “lying to the voters”. What the talking heads really mean when they say that ‘his messaging wasn’t right’ or ‘she didn’t have the right talking points’, is that they didn’t lie to the voters the right way. If you have to craft your talking points to get elected, then you have no intention on fulfilling those talking points. They are not authentic to you, so you don’t really believe them to the extent that you need to actually follow through on them once you take office. Over the last 6 months I saw and heard many TV commercials, radio spots and billboards touting one candidate or another from both parties. They are all ridiculous. How anyone can be influenced by anyone of those ads is beyond me. But sadly, too many people are persuaded by those lies.
We were told that there was going to be a red wave; did we have a red wave? Did we have a red ripple? I don’t know. Maybe the people who thought there was going to be a red wave spent too much time embedded in their echo chambers on cable TV and the internet to see that there was just as many people embedded in their own echo chambers listening to the exact opposite of what was said in our echo chambers. It’s interesting that the election is less than 24 hours over, and politicians and strategists are already talking about 2024. Are our elected leaders focused on governing? Are they focused on doing what’s right for the American people? Or are they mainly focused on a gaining and maintaining power? Meanwhile we spend $4.5 trillion per year, we have $31 trillion of debt, and it seems like not much gets better, ever. And we shouldn’t let any politician tell us that our lives are better because of them. Use our own eyes. Look at what we are paying at the grocery store. Look at what we are paying at the pump. Look at how much we are paying in taxes. Look at how hard it is to make ends meet. Look at how crime-ridden our communities are. Look at how much drugs have infested our lives. Look at what is being taught in our schools.
We, the people, play the game that the politicians want us to play, by their rules, that benefits them and not us. And every single one of the candidates who won their election will be much wealthier two years from now, while most of us who didn’t donate thousands of dollars to their campaigns will be much worse off. So, two years from now, there will be a blue wave or a red wave or a purple wave. It doesn’t matter because all that means is those who are moving to Washington, DC, their lives will be much better off, and the rest of us will be forgotten for the next 18 months until the politicians need us again to help enrich themselves and their donors.
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Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.