(Skimpole) “But what did you think upon the road?”

            These are grim days for thought. Maybe all are, it’s hard to know, I’ve only lived now. Earlier eras we may recall as thoughtful because of the ideas of a few. The Concord of Thoreau, Emerson, and Hawthorne feels a heady place, but how many of their neighbors condoned or even comprehended their concepts?

            Bosses dislike thought because it’s disruptive and slows momentum. Soldiers – of church, state, or any organization – are expected to goosestep identically, no questions asked. Joe McCarthy, during his infamous hearings, asked the writer Dashiell Hammett, “Mister Hammett, if you were in our position, would you allow your book in the USIS (United States Information Service) libraries?” “If I were you, Senator,” Hammett replied, “I would not allow any libraries.”

            The more fractious the time, the less welcome thought. In war, you sign up and shut up, endorsing the claims of your side, hogwash and all. Nobody likes a heretic, especially when they’re right. Despots don’t debate dissenters, they dispatch them.

            Ours is an anxious, angry moment, more rancorous daily. Fires at America’s periphery – in Ukraine and Gaza so far – threaten to widen into a holocaust. Our war at home grows ever more vicious. As we choose up sides, attitudes harden into antipathy. A heretofore even-tempered columnist wrote recently, “No friend of Trump is a friend of mine.” Trump’s MAGgots are obliged to check their minds at the door. Think and to hell with you.

            Dickens’ hilarious Coavinses is right: there is no odds in thinking. We’ve got enough to do, and little enough to get for it, without hindering action with thought. Thinking wins few friends. You and I enjoy a good think – but we are not many – and mostly keep our thoughts to ourselves. I’m sometimes scolded for the violence of my vituperation: Mightn’t I tone it down a bit? I could but I won’t. I hate the enemies of democracy. I’m tempted to hurl acid in their eyes.

            We’re too hectic to think. Thinking is a skill like any other: you need to learn it; practice improves performance. Practice requires quiet, discipline, and fellow practitioners. Who these days is taught to think or rewarded for their clarity? Our is an age of spectacle and screeching. There may be thoughtful souls in Congress but whom do we hear from? Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, Jordan, Cruz, Hawley, Tuberville – loudmouths – and Trump, the loudest mouth of all.

            I think for fun. It’s a game I enjoy, like backgammon. It amuses and amazes me how one notion hooks arms with the next, as in a square dance. Keep at it and there’s no telling where you’ll whirl to. I revel in the camaraderie of conversation. I expect no good of thinking but the joy of doing it. I write to convivialize, not convince.

            Thinking, like anything worth doing, takes work. Modernity supplies prostheses to make it easier. My laptop helps me write more accurately and quickly, looking up answers, suggesting synonyms and quotes. On any topic, pedigreed experts pronounce authoritative opinions. AI supplants more and more brains: why bother trying to compete?

            The less we think for ourselves, the more spooked we are by our whereabouts. MAGgots, when interrogated, revert to shouted insults, distrusting their ability to explain. They revile reason as trickery meant to entrap. Coavinses is funny in the novel but not in life.