I cling to my pillow not to read the news. Iran, Epstein, ICE raids, Cuba, Venezuela, Greenland, election-rigging, grift, poor trembling Truth. My inbox groans with queries – How come! What next? I distance myself by dissociation – This too will pass, Look on the bright side, Read a poem – no dice. The clock ticks toward a denouement – no slowing it now.
Right yourself by writing yourself, I school myself. My infallible fix. Let the music of words make misery amusing. I try. It helps – some – for a while. Syllables paw like pups at the teat. Adorable! Then gloom resumes like a toxic fog. Bombs. Dead schoolgirls. Our elected protectors standing gawking with their pathetic excuses. My America.
I confront myself: Live, you ninny! Read your own exhortations. You’re alive, aren’t you? Show some spunk! “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on” (Samuel Beckett). “Why seems it so particular with thee?” (Shakespeare). I seize shards of thought, not to drown. Others have had it worse. “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” (Julian of Norwich).
I pull myself together not to shame myself – and spoil your day. Words suppose hearers who will judge. Your presence gives me presence of mind. Whether you exist in fact, you exist in mind, the only place possible. Try this experiment: if nobody thought of you, would you exist? You call me to attention like a drill sergeant. “Hup to, private – eyes front!”
America hurtles toward a resolution – everyone feels it. Each day a shock more startling. He really is trying to steal America! Will he get away with it? No need to name the antecedent of “he.”
There is no stopping our slide to a climactic crash. The same “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER” he demands of Iran, we demand of him. He has done too much too terrible to expect forgiveness and he knows it. If he read, he might quote Macbeth:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published I am in bloodStepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,Returning were as tedious as go o’er.
Blood will have blood. Which he knows. If he does not win, he loses – all. Like Macbeth – or any cornered cur – he will use any means available to save himself. If that means calling out the troops on his own people, or dropping bombs, so be it. His success is his sole concern.
As ours should be ours. By “our,” I mean more than you and me, I mean the American idea, that improbable dream of equality, opportunity, self-rule. We must Make America Great Again – great with the values and aspirations that made us mighty before. We must welcome strangers, treat each other as we would be treated, feed the hungry, tend the sick, embrace the frail, live in peace with our neighbors. These are not wild-eyed fantasies but within our power if we so decide. Nothing keeps us from goodness but ourselves.
More than a few will be crushed by the coming crisis. Sadly there is no alternative. Poor judgment may be rebuked, but Evil must be destroyed. Rest assured, the fiends in charge think the same about you and me.
The good news about the coming crisis is it may prove redemptive. We will have shocked ourselves into decency. Going forward, we will be less complacent, inattentive. We will know that what “can’t happen here” can – and has. How often those fearful for their lives promise reform. Give us back America, we pray, and we’ll take better care!
Is my dread apocalyptic? Undoubtedly. Excessive? Let’s hope.