“There must be a reckoning!”

                  Reckoning? 

                  Reckoning is one of those words easy to hurry past, like a shy smile. Why pause? Reckoning means tallying, accounting, settling bills or scores. “I reckon” is grizzled geezer for “I understand.” A divine reckoning is nothing to sneeze at.

                  If, this Election Day, power reverts to our party – that is, the party of truth, justice, decency, equity, fairness, literacy, probity – how should we reckon with the defeated? Forget and forgive – eyes forward? Make the villains “pay” for their crimes? Or chart a course in between, tempering justice with mercy?

                  Long fury wants to incinerate my foes for their decade-long abuse of my beloved nation. They cannot suffer enough. Strip them of their pillage, pillory them for their cruelty, humiliate them in the public square! I can almost smell their flesh roasting in the bonfire. No pity!

                  Then again – as my pulse subsides – what’s best – for our brutalized nation and my own bruised soul? “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” urges the adage. And (from my go-to guy):

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

                  Listen to Seneca on the subject, whose quiet steely voice echoes down the corridor of time:

Clemency is the moderation of the mind of one who has the power of taking vengeance.

As physicians, after trying milder remedies, proceed to harsher ones, and, if these fail, have recourse to the knife and cautery, so the wise ruler will employ punishment only by degrees. 

Nothing becomes a ruler more than clemency.

                  Reckoning does not mean repayment. These thugs’ suffering cannot restore the years, lives, and relations they’ve destroyed. So let’s be ruled by our heads, not our railing hearts. What’s best – not for me, but for all? What will hasten the restoration of the nation we had in mind?

                  Of course these malefactors must pay for their crimes, be stripped of their booty. Their suffering is just. But oughtn’t the preponderance of our energy be devoted not to the past but the future: to mending our broken system and preventing the rich from filching the birthright of all?

                  Better a bettered America than a battered foe. Our opportunity will be brief. This November 3 we can arrest the fiends, preventing further predations. Win the election so decidedly it cannot be stolen. Spend the next two years preparing for November 8, 2028, when the entire power to remake America will be reclaimed by the just. During the following two years, from 2029 to 2031, enact the necessary changes swiftly before bickering and self-interest undermine unanimity. Nations do not change gradually, but explosively, terrifyingly, when the prevailing order becomes intolerable.

                  The most satisfying reckoning in this struggle will be a thriving nation not groaning criminals. Our next few years may well rival the Civil War in ugliness. Many good souls will perish. The rich will not readily surrender the reins of power. Our goal, I reckon, is to be good while doing good, wage a war of which we can be proud.

                  Good luck.