The assassination attempt and I sit across from each other like a reluctant student and his unenthused examiner. Neither of us wants to be here. Assassination attempts, successful or failed, are defining moments in our national narrative. Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, John Wilkes Booth, Leo Czolgosz we remember as we do few of their contemporaries. Their stories interest us. Propriety, though, preempts too eager curiosity. Our cue card reads, “Violence has no place in our politics.” We repeat this robotically, knowing better. More than a few of today’s politicians promote and protect violence. Trump’s ruffian followers invaded our Capitol to keep him in office. Repeatedly he has promised to avenge himself violently if he returns to power. He goads, insults, humiliates his perceived adversaries. He had this coming.

I’m sorry this assassin missed – that’s the truth – only it behooves me to bemoan. Trump juggles hand grenades, daring one to explode, and I’m supposed to be shocked he gets nicked? Gimme a break.

For a decade I’ve been predicting – in print – a violent conclusion to this civil war. Replacing democracy with tyranny is an all-or-nothing attempt. Trump seeks an America like Putin’s Russia or Orban’s Hungary or Xi’s China or that fatso’s in North Korea, with himself plumply atop. Democracy annoys him; he does not believe in it. Those who trust our democracy to contain him, if he’s reinstalled, are smoking something. Give the guy credit: he says what he thinks (ad tedium) and attempts what he vows.

Ever hopeful, I remain convinced that Biden will retire in favor of a younger champion who will wipe the floor with Trump on November 5 and enforce democracy for another generation – but I’m not counting on it. I’m hunkering down, envisioning my Gulag, if it comes to that, listening to Shostakovich and other makers whose voices were stifled by their brutal hour. Beauty and wonder are always everywhere available, sometimes you just have to look harder. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote in prison, to keep himself amused, thus inventing the novel.

Am I grim? You bet. Never has existential dread so unsettled my intellect. I’ve had practical, medical and romantic worries, who hasn’t, but never this sense of civilization’s risk. Everything I love feels jeopardized – and those I love.

What to do in this time of war? One’s best. My best, my sole contribution, is my voice. I tell what truth I can best I can while the clock ticks down, hugging those I love, rousting myself from gloom and insisting on joy. I pray, too, not expecting response but because it feels good. Others, I remind myself, have had it worse.  And nothing lasts forever – even the dream of America, which once seemed so sure.

What sickened and stupefied America? What drove us toward concepts corrosive of our interests and calamitous to our wellbeing?

I’ve some ideas but now is not the time. Now is a time to grieve, pause, ponder, take a deep breath, and renew our strength for what may be a final, defining contest. If the America our Founders envisioned is to go down, let us go down fighting. I’m incredulous, but not immobilized. There is always another glory to be witnessed, thought to be thought, song to be sung. I am old for war, but not too old, not while I have breath.

Assassination is an understandable, if intolerable, response to our moment.  It makes matters worse. If we cannot rest or quit, where might we find relief? In love and beauty. I observe myself making my way through this terrible time. It’s interesting. I take notes.