Let’s talk about anything else!

                  After assassinations or 9/11 our communal attention was comparably galvanized but gradually fear faded. These years – more than a decade now – our horror has kept growing. How often have we gasped, “You can’t believe!” about some malicious innovation. He’s been a maestro of turpitude, gotta give him that. Thus does cancer mesmerize the infected. You may plead with yourself to think of anything else but waking or sleeping your attention reverts to the malignant rot.

                  And now?

                  Could it be after a mere thirty-two days our ballooning dread will have popped? A bully’s victims await his debility to exact their revenge. How many little knives quiver impatiently in their sheaths, restless for their chance! “Let them hate as long as they fear,” sneered Caligula – but when they cease to fear, beware! (Read the accounts of Caligula’s last moments and lick your lips.)

                  So must parents feel toward their kid’s abuser. Jesus wouldn’t approve but isn’t his mercy aspirational, not realistic? Even pastor Bonhoeffer, a man of peace if ever, joined the plot to murder Hitler. But how much retribution is enough? When is our rage sated? What should be the decorum of revenge?

                  It’s a tricky calculus. Sages and saints lavish us with guidance about being good, but who teaches us how to be harsh? Mercy is out of the question – at least for me. These ghouls have gored my beloved too gravely for bygones to be bygones. I’m kind of hoping the whole crew flees the country – to their comfy dachas outside Moscow – to spare us the onus of exacting justice. Some will lean on “the law” to settle their score, but these thugs broke the law, we need a new law to deal with their lawlessness.

                  I compose these paragraphs to prepare. The results November third might yet disappoint – we’ve been disappointed often before. The outcome might be equivocal, leaving the villains with vestiges of their power. But how, if right prevails, might we restore our peace? What route, if any, to a happy heart?

                  For sure we must remove all the visible symbols of his tyranny. No triumphal arches, no fat faces pasted on passports, the White House must be restored to its virginal modesty. A revived Kennedy Center should be opened to glamorous applause. (Won’t that be a night!)

                  For sure the money stolen by these crooks and their cronies must be returned and painful penalties imposed. I feel quite certain they’ve stashed plenty in offshore accounts to tide them over. (They’re smart at caring for money, if not for people.)

                  For sure, science, education, truth must be restored to authority and dignity. And these ugly years must be remembered, not erased, as the Germans after Hitler confronted their shame. It will be tempting to sigh relieved, “Phew, that’s over,” but it will not be over. We must, if we can, work our way back to an America where such atrocities can’t recur.

                  We must pray for leadership as never before. One lesson from this debacle is it matters who rules. Omnipotent America is not on autopilot. One bad actor can wreak havoc in an eyeblink. Virtue always matters, but in crises more.

                  Mine is the generation that made this mess. We should feel bowed with shame. We will leave our children and grandchildren a nation bleeding, weakened, damaged. We must never claim others were responsible. We are all to blame.

                  At best a victory November third will commence a long hard period of reflection and recovery. Pray we will have learned from our mistakes.