MAINTAINING BALANCE—AND MEMORY

TWO RECENT EVENTS—ONE A NEWSPAPER GUEST ESSAY, THE OTHER PURELY PERSONAL, resonate with “An Uneven Pendulum,” SimanaitisSays, December 7, 2025. E.J. Dionne Jr. offers “Trump Confronts a Backlash of the Reasonable,” December 13, 2025, The New York Times. And the personal chat was commonplace enough: in a Post Office on a holiday mission. Here are tidbits gleaned from both.

Dionne’s Guest Essay. E.J. Dionne Jr. writes, “Believing in democracy does not require faith that majorities are always right. It does mean having confidence that most of your fellow citizens will, over time, approach public questions with a basic reasonableness. ‘Abraham Lincoln, tradition has it, said it more pithily: ‘You cannot fool all the people all the time.’ ”

Dionne continues, “A corollary to Lincoln, that you can’t fool all the people who voted for you all the time, explains the sharp decline in President Trump’s approval ratings.”

A Billionaire Mocking Affordability. Dionne observes, “A significant share of the voters who backed Mr. Trump have decided that he has largely ignored the primary issue that pushed them his way, the cost of living. A billionaire regularly mocking concern about affordability only makes matters worse. They see him as distracted by personal obsessions and guilty of overreach, even when they sympathize with his objectives. Many of his former supporters see him breaking promises he made, notably on not messing with their access to health care.”

In this, it’s Republicans at large who share culpability. 

Too Blatant to be Ignored. “A recent The Economist/You Gov poll,” Dionne cites, “found that 56 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump was using his office for personal gain; only 32 percent didn’t. A similar 56 percent saw Mr. Trump as directing the Justice Department to go after people he saw as his political enemies; just 24 percent didn’t.”

The Pendulum Needs To Swing. Dionne recounts, “The upshot: A great many Americans who helped put Mr. Trump in office have absorbed what’s happened since. They may not be glued to every chaotic twist of this presidency, but they do pay attention and have concluded, reasonably, that this is not what they voted for.”

Dionne continues, “I think of these shifts as the triumph of reasonableness—and not because I agree with where these fellow citizens have landed (although I do). I’m buoyed by the capacity of citizens to absorb new facts and take in information even when it challenges decisions they previously made. It turns out that swing voters are what their label implies. The evidence of their own lives and from their own eyes matters.” 

Dionne Concludes. “But in 2025,” he summarizes, “Trumpian flimflam hit its limits—even in the G.O.P. when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana State Senate defied the president’s demand for a midterm congressional redistricting. His power to intimidate is ebbing. A reasonable majority exists. It’s searching for alternatives to a leader and a movement it has found wanting.”

That is, to put matters in my perspective, perhaps the pendulum is on its way back to reasonability. 

A Post Office Chat. What with Christmas mailing and purchasing stamps for cards, I’ve recently been in two extended lines at my local Post Office. Generally, the lines were patient; indeed, reflecting holiday spirits.

With some ten folks ahead of me, a new addition tapped me on the back and asked, “Please save my place here—I’ve got a couple addresses to complete.”

“Sure,” I said, “In fact I’m happy to swap places with you once you’re ready.” Sure enough, by the time he returned, we both moved up—and the line continued to grow.

We chatted about Christmas/Hannakah mailings and other stuff. He told me he was mailing books as gifts; what’s more, he noted he was the author. I told me about my R&T career and writing SimanaitisSays essentially on a daily basis.

“What’s it about?,” he asked. “Just about anything” (my usual response), “old cars and aircraft, new science and technology, old movies, our English language—even politics….”

Being of the same generation, we lamented the current state of polarization; how people ceased to chat amiably.

His book, he said, was titled Humanity, NOT. “With the ‘NOT’ all caps,” he noted.

Humanity, Not, by Ari Babaknia with Ardeshir Mohassess, Memorah Foundation, 2014. (Amazon lists a single copy left in stock.)

Part of its AbeBooks description reads, “Reaction to the Holocaust has to be other than mere horror and revulsion. It has to be more than empathy….”

Touching my arm gently, my line-mate said, “We’re both old people and remember the importance of knowing how to speak with each other. I’m an obstetrician who’s known the joy of bringing so many into life.” 

The wait into buying stamps seemed less long. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2025