Democracy...of the people, by the people, and for the people...is so fragile that you can vote it out of existence. Just select candidates who will only accept the election results if they win.
---Neil deGrasse Tyson
It's now coming up on three days since the midterm elections that were supposed to determine which parties control the Senate and House of Representatives...and it still is inconclusive, although in all likelihood the Republicans will regain control of the House after just four years of being in the minority. Supposedly, the tedious time-consuming mail-in ballot counting is continuing across the country, with Nevada and Arizona standing out among the close Senate races and numerous House races still undetermined. As for me, throughout my adult lifetime I've seen swings between the two major parties and easily accept how voters can run on emotion and ignorance when casting their ballots...I've been known to regret some of my own votes as well. But implicit in all this cyclic give-and-take of partisan political power is the confidence we have that the losers of elections will accept the results and allow for the peaceful transfer of power. Ever since the Bush-Gore election debacle in 2000 I've seen an increased amount of election denial on the part of both politicians and people at large, and this is unhealthful for a representative democratic republic as we have. It reached a head in 2020 when an actual sitting president refused to accept his electoral defeat...and now within one of our parties a large number only accept elections if they win. So, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the narrator of the great Cosmos series...and someone I follow on Twitter...is absolutely right in his assessment, which he made just before the election. By the way, in fledgling democracies elsewhere in the world, the same thing has happened and is happening...the people elect someone as leader who uses the system once he is in power to change the laws to ensure that he will remain in power: not cool at all here in the good old U.S.A....
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