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| Nov. 6, 2024 |
I'm on vacation, dredging up recent material written but never posted (amazing to think I write even MORE than what appears here. Almost makes a guy wish someone would sneak up behind me with a sock full of nickels and just coldcock me. Make the man STOP...)
Anyway, I wrote this the morning after Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States, then decided it was simultaneously too melodramatic and too coy. Although I noticed a reader posting these exact lines, so I wasn't alone in thinking of them. Hard to believe we're still in the same month, November. Not three weeks into this nightmare. "Yesterday, or Centuries before?" indeed.
Anyway, I wrote this the morning after Donald Trump was re-elected president of the United States, then decided it was simultaneously too melodramatic and too coy. Although I noticed a reader posting these exact lines, so I wasn't alone in thinking of them. Hard to believe we're still in the same month, November. Not three weeks into this nightmare. "Yesterday, or Centuries before?" indeed.
The sky was dull Wednesday morning as I walked the dog. Nobody was out even though it was after 7 a.m. It felt vaguely like a holiday, like New Year's Day. Part something special, part something off. I thought, perhaps damningly, of Emily Dickinson's poem that begins:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes -Not that there was any "great pain" Tuesday night. Trump leapt out of the blocks and never looked back. Took all seven so-called "swing" states. Won the popular vote by 5 million. "Great pain" is a wild exaggeration, but that "formal feeling" nails it exactly. The street seemed like the set of a play, the sky, a painted canvas backdrop.
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
And stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
Dickinson continues:
The Feet, mechanical, go round -
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought -
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone —
Was there any kind of contentment, quartz or otherwise? I certainly wasn't shaking my fist at the sky. Not "contentment" though, surely. More like a lack of desperation, almost a calm acceptance. I'm all outraged out. We believe in democracy, fine, this is democracy. This is what the people want, apparently. Let them have it then. What's the H.L. Mencken quote? "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
It's not what I want, but then I am not the common people, in that I have a good job, a solid education, lots of money in the bank, and gold-plated health insurance. This is not what I want, but so what? It's not about me.
It's not what I want, but then I am not the common people, in that I have a good job, a solid education, lots of money in the bank, and gold-plated health insurance. This is not what I want, but so what? It's not about me.
This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go —
Again, "Hour of Lead" overdoing it, but "the letting go" right on the money. The 2024 race is too much to carry around your heart, though abandoning it is easier said than done. I'm not ready to let go of the dream that is America. But I'm prepared to spend four years watching it trampled by malicious morons. I hope I am prepared. I am trying to be prepared. Though really, how could you be prepared? That is the Trump essence. A continual shock, a vertigo some Americans nestle into like mire and others can never get comfortable occupying, never get used to. Never close.
A neighbor came the other direction on her morning constitutional.
"Good morning," she said, grimly.
"I can't do a good morning," I replied, not smiling. "So I'll say 'hello.'"
A neighbor came the other direction on her morning constitutional.
"Good morning," she said, grimly.
"I can't do a good morning," I replied, not smiling. "So I'll say 'hello.'"
“Breathe deep the gathering gloom
ReplyDeleteWatch lights fade from every room….
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is an illusion.”
Thanks, Anonymous. I like that
DeleteFrom the Moody Blues, nice!
Delete“The Moody Blues”
DeleteOne of my favorite bands
Good points.
ReplyDeleteWe have had only a handful of mostly sunny days since the election, totally typical for November through March. thanks to Lake Erie. Sunlessness in Northeast Ohio can last for days at a time, even weeks. Will every day feel like that image for the next four years?
ReplyDeleteThe leaden November skies are an accurate manifestation of how millions of people, in America and elsewhere, are feeling as the holidays begin. This year, it will be more of a slog down a muddy and slushy unpaved road than a stroll along a twinkling and gaily bedecked city street. And there are mines. And booby traps. And snipers. Plenty of snipers.
Maybe akin to something like Bill Mauldin's iconic Willie and Joe, in the classic WWII cartoons in Stars and Stripes. They're exhausted and filthy, and have seen too much misery and death. "Hey, wasn't this show supposed to end by Christmas? How come we're going in the other direction? What's this Bulge everybody's talking about?"
Over by Christmas? Not quite. Some won't be going home on their feet. And nobody has even reached the camps yet. Hell...the worst is yet to come.
The image snapped by Mr. S. on the morning after brings to mind something written decades ago (early 60s), that appeared in the old Daily News. A middle-aged syndicated columnist, probably in his 40s or 50s by then, was trying to convey how it felt to be in one's teens or twenties, three decades earlier, during the bleakness of the economic catastrophe that came to be called the Great Depression.
He wrote: "To be young and jobless, and without hope, was to feel as though every day, even in summer, was a day in November...and that the skies, no matter how bright and sunny, were always pouring rain." Is that the weather forecast for the next four years...or even longer? You can only for cry so long, and then you have to do something else with your time.
But what? Flee? Fight? Cocoon? Too poor for the first option, too old for the second, so Door Number Three seems to be the pick...at least for a while. Maybe for quite a while.
A brief hiccup in the stock market, sixty-plus years ago, starkly reminded an aging journalist of the lean years of his youth. This? It feels more like the returning symptoms of a terminal illness, after a period of remission. In short, a relapse. This is no hiccup. The malignancy is back.
Was that Sydney J. Harris?
DeleteAnd so is the First Witch...Melanoma (sorry, couldn't resist it).
DeleteNo. He would have been the right age, though (he turned 45 that year...1962). But it was not in his column. It was somebody else. One of the syndicated columns that ran on the editorial page. The Daily News was what I grew up reading...and it was probably the best newspaper Chicago has ever had.
DeleteIt turns out the fat traitor didn't win the popular vote by that much!
ReplyDeleteoh, he didn't win by much huh? I guess thats some kind of consolation... NOT!
DeleteWell said, as always, thank you.
ReplyDeleteWell, no republic lasts forever. When the Soviet Union busted up, a teacher told us 'our form of government will he dismantled in an act of revenge. Might take decades, but karma is a bitch.
ReplyDeleteShame. Shame on all of our “fellow Americans” who voted for that dangerous cretin. I hope they get what he promised in spades. Unfortunately so will the rest of us who clearly saw the menace, the danger. I keep thinking of Maya Angelou, “when someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time.” And Obama reminded us at the DNC that we have all seen this movie before and sequels are never good.
ReplyDeleteMy sentiments exactly. Thank you !
DeleteWhat bothers me a lot is not just the loss of joy, the loss of possibly, is the loss of all that talent—Kamala, Tim, Adam Kinzinger, Jack Smith, Liz Cheney and so many others
ReplyDeleteGood point.
DeleteDon't put Jack Smith in there, if he had done to logical thing & charged the fat traitor in DC, where he stole the documents from, not in Palm beach with that lunatic judge acting as his unofficial lawyer, he would've been convicted & serving time in a federal prison now!
DeleteSmith is either incompetent or was actually working for the fat traitor!
“This is not who we are!” I suggest this is exactly who we are!
ReplyDeleteQuoting enlightened souls like Dickinson when pondering Trump strikes me as giving him more gravitas than he deserves. A better way to process Trump is to consider a B level horror movie where the monster seems to be dead and keeps coming back to cause more havoc. Our only solace is that the human condition insists that all humans, even monsters, end up in the black, never ending Void. I pray to the indifferent heavens that I outlive this sociopathic monster.
ReplyDeleteA quote from one of our Founding Fathers, John Adams:
ReplyDelete“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
For all the misery, past and future, we have to hope that Trump succeeds, or at least pray that his foolishness doesn't fail to the extent of throwing the country into a depression or repeating the nightmare of splintered families and caged children.
ReplyDeletejohn
No. I do not hope that Trump succeeds. His success will mean suffering, maiming and death to many things too important to humanity. His failure may do likewise, but as a member of the group likely to suffer and die under his regime, I choose it happens in his failure, not his success.
DeleteI intend to act as a patriotic citizen and contribute to the well being of my community and country.
DeleteI don't steerthe ship I just row. I'm going to row even harder
I'm an American. And intend to act like one. Not roll over and give up
Perhaps selfishly, I’m worried that my choices for Medicare that I start next summer will be limited to the advantage plans and not the government plan. Isn’t privatization of government functions their entire mantra?
ReplyDeleteHL Mencken also observed that No one every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
ReplyDelete