A Candy Land Certification

I wasn’t going to post on this, since the point to be made here has been made in a number of other quarters, and has undoubtedly already occurred to you; but a metaphor that seemed most apt struck me, and I can’t resist.  This week, we had a Candy Land Certification of Donald Trump’s November electoral victory.

Virtually all are aware of the board game, Candy Land.  We played Candy Land quite a bit with our grandchildren over the Holidays, as we had with our children at the same ages.  A player’s victory or loss depends entirely upon what s/he draws from a shuffled deck of colored cards that coordinate with colored squares on the path to the Candy Castle.  Wikipedia describes the game as “… suitable for young children. No strategy is involved … .”

That said, precisely what makes the game suitable for young children – its simplicity and random nature – makes it difficult for an oldster to “fix” the game so that a young player wins, even if the oldster is so inclined.  (Some are, some aren’t; we’ll leave the benefit of each approach to parenting and grandparenting specialists 🙂 ).  Over the Holidays, we found that our young family members would be happy when they won – peace would reign – or very upset when they lost – tantrums might erupt.  They are all wonderful kids; we are inordinately proud of each of them; their behavior was the same as I remember our kids’ being 35 years ago, and I am confident that they will all learn to maturely deal with defeat as their parents have.  (I recall that my own ability to handle defeat in my early grade school years left a lot to be desired; one might well infer from these notes that my demeanor hasn’t improved much 😉 ).

You know where I’m going with this.  Despite all the bromides now being cast out about “the peaceful transfer of power,” peace is only prevailing in our land because Mr. Trump won.  If the vote totals between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had been exactly reversed in the key swing states – Ms. Harris lost the three “Blue Wall” states that would have been enough for her to claim an Electoral College majority by an average of slightly over 1% — our land would have been torn apart over the last two months by lies, threats, spurious lawsuits, violence, MAGA state legislators’ attempts to override their states’ vote tabulations, and Congressional MAGAs’ baseless procedural challenges to Ms. Harris’ certification.

But this week, we had no tantrums. The kids are happy because they’re getting to enter the Candy Castle.