A version of this column was posted on lasvegassun.com.

Trading wars with our friends. Our neighbors. Our fellow Americans.

Unlike very few Americans (because they have real lives), I spent a good part of Friday worrying about the vote in the U.S. Senate, where senators grappled with a no-win decision: whether to pass a spending bill that the House voted for — and then skipped town — and, basically, left the issue in the laps of a handful of Democrats.

This was not an easy vote if you cared about ordinary Americans and their families. Had the Democrats not supplied enough votes to keep the government open, the everyday lives of multiple millions of Americans would have been turned upside down. Jobs would be lost, paychecks not paid, travel restricted, Social Security less secure, health care on life support and myriad other ills that people take for granted because their government was at work. With the government shut down for more than a few days, who knows the mess we would have been in?

But, by not helping Republicans to pass the spending bill, the Democrats would have left the people in the middle and at the bottom of the economic rungs of America’s financial ladder at the continuing mercy of Elon Musk’s DOGE-doers and President Donald Trump’s retributive instincts as well as those who don’t really believe in government.

There was no easy way to go. We saw the difficulty in that decision by the way our two U.S. senators from Nevada voted. One voted for and one against. Asked by friends “what would you do, how would you vote,” my inclination was to be consistent.

I have always believed that shutting the government down is never a good idea. While some people think that an economic jolt to the system is good for every business — and it may be — the business of government is people. Jolting people and their lives, expectations and financial security should be a last resort not a first one.

And when I consider the fragility of Nevada’s economy — based mostly on the health of our tourism — the idea of shutting down is anathema. What happened to tourism during COVID-19 is not that far behind us that anyone should forget the devastation that followed.

When the vote came in, it was clear what choice was made. The Democrats in the Senate decided to keep the government open and functioning.

What happened Friday is just one more consequence of our vote last November. It was a close election, but Trump won. Voters know who he is and what he has promised. There should be no surprise there.

The financial brinkmanship, the trade wars that loom, the ax-wielding of Musk and his DOGE comrades, the threats to swallow up Greenland, annex Canada and subsume Mexico are just part of the package that is Trump. As is the real-time, destabilizing effort to abolish NATO and leave Europe to the whims of Vladimir Putin — our one-time enemy now turned Trump bestie — are all part of what this country voted for this past November.

Whether the rest of us deserve what may happen is an open question. For certain, the MAGA world and its enablers will get what they deserve from the man who would be king.

In the meantime, life will go on. As the president said, it could and probably will be a bit challenging.

Understatement is one of his gifts.

But the time and place to fix our own mistakes is at election time, not at a time when shutting down the government of the United States — with all the uncertainty and confusion that may follow — is our only option.

My point is simple, no matter how complicated the situation appears. There was no right vote Friday. People have to do what they think is best, and senators are no different.

There is, however, a matter of right and wrong. But before we can go there, we have to look at ourselves.

The voters created this mess and it is the voters who will have to live with the consequences.

And if, in the end, they don’t like what they asked for, what they prayed for and what they have yearned for, it is the voters who will have to make things right.

No matter how many times they get it wrong!

Brian Greenspun is editor, publisher and owner of the Sun.