https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/05/13/midterms-2022-expect-the-worst-n1597803
It is currently a popular meme that the Republicans are poised for a Congressional sweep in the 2022 midterm elections, perhaps flipping as many as 40 — some say 60 — seats and regaining control of both houses. After all, the Democrats have performed so poorly across the board, whether in foreign policy, the economic realm, the maelstrom at the southern border, and in the overall domestic havoc they have wrought, as to constitute a disaster not seen in many decades, if not in living memory.
Is this about to change? Victor Davis Hanson is not so sure. “The traditional bedrocks of the American system,” he writes, “a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system — are dissolving … The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism … Is that not the tired story of left-wing revolutionaries from 18th-century France to early 20th-century Russia to the contemporary disasters in Cuba and Venezuela?”
As the 2nd century B.C. Greek historian Polybius wrote in The Histories, a detailed study of the Roman wars and the revolving nature of political regimes, “democracy in its turn is demolished and changes into the rule of force and violence” — a thesis recently developed by Ryszard Legutko in The Demon in Democracy, where he warns about the “vulgarization of Liberal norms and practices” and the violation of the “strict and demanding rules derived from religion and classical ethics.” The precession of the political equinoxes is a fact of history, and the issue is whether it is America’s turn to corroborate such historical predictions.
One hopes not and the signs appear modestly encouraging, at least in the presidential interim. At the moment, the nation on the whole seems to have had enough of Democrat malfeasance and the increasingly rapid slide into political tyranny and social misery. Consequently, as many believe, a patriot tsunami — a “red wave” — is set to obliterate the opposition. Republican officials, candidates, and their supporters are exulting, savoring an unprecedently massive victory in the polls. But not so fast. Despite the auspicious news, the crystal ball is far more clouded than is confidently assumed. The Democrats may have created a domestic shambles of their political tenure, but bad guys rarely come last — or only too late to repair the devastation they have caused.
