No matter how we may try to sanitize the past, the fact remains that history is an ugly place filled with sporadic wondrous people doing great deeds.

They are, however, the exception and not the rule.

We are left to grapple with this in the wake of last week’s Supreme Court ruling, which will, in effect, return swaths of the country to a time of voting rights prior to the Civil Rights era in the 1960s.

We all want to believe that we — as an American people, and as an American country — are better than to use racism in the year of our Lord 2026.

Unfortunately, there is a timeless adage that runs counter to this hope: power corrupts.

And, speaking to the history of practically every nation the planet has ever seen, power is what dictates the rules of the game — not common sense or human decency.

Michelle Obama famously said “when they go low, we go high” in 2016 — a remarkable saying, full of grace and beneficence.

Embodied by the Democratic party for years since, fed up Democrats nationwide seem to be beginning to resent that concept. It turns out that when you play by the rules and assume that your opponent will as well, you end up simply losing.

We are all made worse by this, to be clear.

But, it isn’t exactly unique in our history.

The other day, we stumbled upon an interesting and forgotten nugget of American history — Huey “The Kingfish” Long, Jr.

Long was to the left of FDR and the New Deal. These days, we can only imagine how radically far left he would seem. He was a Louisiana governor and US Senator who ended up being assassinated in 1935.

He was also breathtakingly corrupt, wielding power openly and ruthlessly.

One of his more notable flashpoints involved deploying 2,500 militia to New Orleans following his electoral defeat in 1934. Another resulted in National Guardsmen mobilized in Baton Rouge featuring an armed skirmish. Martial law was briefly declared and public gatherings banned.

Long’s legacy is a long list of both remarkable accomplishments and some truly terrifying exercises of power.

Look into him sometime. It’s an illustrative example of what happens when we allow the pursuit of power to reign unchecked.

We won’t sit here and pretend to be in favor of excessive laws and regulations — in fact, we tend to think that, in most cases, excessive legal red tape makes far more peoples’ lives miserable than it actually helps.

The word “excessive,” however, is load-bearing.

Some level of law is required to maintain a reasonable, pro-citizen order.

Our history is full of Longs, on both sides of the aisle — again, remember that Long was a true radical leftist, not like the bluster about some of today’s milquetoast pundits.

If allowed to, these types of people will take advantage of every exception and weakness.

Ultimately, we would love to live in a world where we didn’t need the Civil Rights Act to compel politicians to act remotely reasonably.

That doesn’t mean that we actually live in that world.

Politics, after all, is the Great Game — and there is a type of person who plays exclusively to win, regardless of the feelings of the other players at the table with whom we share a nation and a culture.

We should not be surprised when those who play to win, do in fact win.

If you want fair elections, there need to be laws in place to support that concept — and sufficient enforcement that those laws are not tested and overwhelmed or ignored.

Otherwise, anyone with access to the levers of power will, in fact, pull them — and it will not be to the benefit of the people, but to the benefit of the politicians.

As a newspaper, a pillar of civic engagement, we are supportive of the concept of free elections, and we resist and resent when that is threatened, regardless of party affiliation.

It’s a problem when California does it, and it’s a problem when Louisiana does it.

The will of the people must not be impinged upon, whatever that will ends up saying or how unpopular it may be with the politican class.

Now, we confront a changed politicial landscape across the nation. While the effects will be most concentrated in the South, there will doubtlessly be ripples.

One of the most concerning of those ripples is the increasingly strident rhetoric coming from the Democrats as they are pushed to fight fire with fire.

If you want more politicians like Huey Long, this is a great way to see to it that they arise.