The pain will pass

Welcome to this week's Reno News & Review.

One of the great joys of being the editor of this newspaper is that I get to communicate with all types of people. Usually, they initiate communication because I've written something that they disagree with, and it's usually the straw that breaks the camel's back. This whole newspaper is a pox on the community because I expressed a not particularly radical opinion, and their team lost the election … or whatever.

The opinion that I expressed that piqued at least one reader's interest was that people who don't vote have every right to complain about the results of the election. We have all kinds of rights in the country, and none of them are required. If something is mandatory, it's not a right. I don't lose my right to carry a gun just because I choose not to exercise my right to a speedy trial.

I'm glad this election is over. I look forward to what's going to come. I truly believe it's become a race to the bottom for Democrats and Republicans in this country, and things are going to get worse before they get better. Do I believe this country is going to collapse? No. Have we been through this before? Yes.

There are so many great things that have happened in this country in this century. We've recognized the individual right to have relationships with whom we choose almost across the country. We carry access to all the known information on the planet in our pockets. Some deaf people are able to hear. We're healing people in ways that could barely be imagined in 1998.

You know who thinks politics matter? People who are hurt by politics. But it takes people being hurt by politics in order for them to get involved in politics. And that means this country is going to lurch to the right and the left like a drunken senator, as business and individuals pull the country this way and the other. But you know what I see in the future? A progressive period that will make the one in the early part of the 20th century look like the '50s.