Scott Ritter: What the midterm elections say about America

The vote lays bare a people unwilling to cast off the shroud of consumerist excess and strive for conscience and national renewal Tuesday’s mid-term elections hang over the heads of the American voters like an executioner’s sword – halfway through President Donald Trump’s second term in office, the elections are not simply a referendum on the state of the union, but perhaps more importantly, a hearing on the fate of the president himself.The first two years of Donald Trump’s come back tour have not gone anything like the American people who voted him into office two years ago were led to believe. They were promised an end to the endless wars in the Middle East, yet the US finds itself embroiled in an endless war in the Middle East which clearly did not need to be fought, and perhaps worse from the perspective of the psyche of the American voter, is a war America is losing badly.Failed military adventures in the Middle East and Southwest Asia have been a regular feature of the American experience for the past three decades, and elections – especially midterm elections where the president’s name is not on the ballot – do not normally hinge on foreign policy or national security issue...