Taking back? Give it a rest

It's the season of giving. But the country, apparently, remains ripe for the taking.

'We have to take our country back,” said Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump during a speech in Alabama last week. Of all the presidential country-takers, Trump is, hands-down, the most grabby.

'We have to take our government back,” said GOP candidate Carly Fiorina during a talk in Wilton Sunday.

At the same event, fellow hopeful Ben Carson predicted Americans 'would stand up and they would take control of their country again.”

'I say now is the time to do that,” he said.

'We've come to take our country back,” Rand Paul said earlier this year as he launched his own GOP presidential bid. Judging by his polling, not a whole lot of Republicans have taken him up on the offer.

Take heart, Democrats, you won't be left out of the taking.

'Time to take back America,” Vice President Joe Biden said in a 2014 speech in Detroit, according to a handy compilation of 'take back” rhetoric compiled by McClatchy's Washington bureau. At various times, Hillary Clinton, Minnesota Sen. Al Franken and even President Barack Obama have called in some way for taking back the country, from unnamed forces.

But this time around, it's Republicans, who hold majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate, control 30 state legislatures and hold 31 governor's seats, who seem most desperate to take back the country.

Of all the stupid hyperbole gushing from the shattered water main also known as our electoral politics, 'taking back the country” is, in my humble view, the worst. I've said it before, but it needs to be said again.

For one thing, it's nonsense. The country remains governed by Americans at this hour, not some shadowy 'other” conjured in a campaign consultant's fever dream. Maybe they're Americans you agree with, or disagree with, but they were elected by Americans or appointed by people elected by Americans. No spaceship landed and filled our bureaucracy with evil androids.

I know it's fashionable to fantasize that, if our side wins an election, the other side instantly will be vaporized and never heard from again. That's not how it works. No matter who wins, they'll have to deal with the losers, who will, in the not-too-distant future, be winners again.

Politicians peddling the notion 2016 will be a climactic election when 'we” finally put 'them” in their place, once and for all, are selling a fairy tale. Trump is the biggest fairy godfather of them all, claiming he can wave his wand of magical, perpetual outrage and make all of our problems, threats and his critics disappear behind a big, luxurious wall.

Maybe, once upon a time, we could listen to this brand of stuff and at least find some comfort in the idea that, despite our differences and red-hot rhetoric, we'd surely come together in a crisis. I'm not sure that's true anymore. Our differences are becoming dangerously deep. Politicians telling us those divisions can't be bridged, that the country must be 'taken back,” are making things worse.

l Comments: (319) 398-8452; todd.dorman@thegazette.com