So much has happened so fast in the Nameless One’s second term, who can keep up? The discrepancy between experience and acknowledgement confuses consciousness. Sometimes we feel like a flood victim, swept up and plopped in a new spot, wholly strange; at other times, actuality ticks along so predictably it feels nothing will change. Same-old, same-old, though, is a state of mind, not a state of play. Everything is always changing, mostly invisibly.
In recent weeks, the news flood has felt calamitous for the Nameless One and heartening to his foes. If you loathe this human aberration with every fiber of your being, you can’t help cheering the spectacularly botched war in Iran, the spiking of gas prices, his allies’ whopping rejection at the polls, the decisive defeat of Hungary’s ogre (a darling of his fellow thugs), a sprinkling of courtroom defeats, the first lady’s unexpected protestation of innocence (innocent of what?), his depiction of himself as Jesus and, of all things, his spat with the Pope. Bad news becomes good when it afflicts our adversary, and this fortnight we feel lavished. On April 7, I became convinced our democracy would recover from its maltreatment – albeit battered, the patient would pull through – and my spirit soared.
Where now? Where next?
“Hope,” quoth Sir Francis Bacon, “is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.” We must beware mistaking opportunity for achievement. Many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip.
It’s time for us to get serious about revising America. There can be no return to yesterday, too much has changed. Our Founders’ bright-eyed idealism feels innocent now; can we trust ourselves to collaborate and coordinate for the common good, or are we selfish and rapacious through and through? How do we cope with this infectious plague of lies? What’s America’s role in our altered world? We’re likely to be rich a while longer – can we be wise?
Revising America won’t be easy. Few of us have experience shaping a nation. Americans figured we got it right two hundred and fifty years ago – why mess with success? And we did get it right – for most of that span, spectacularly right – but today’s world hardly resembles our forefathers’.
I foresee a world drawing into one, not because one world would be nice, but because we won’t succeed otherwise. The Iran War reminds us of our interdependence. One small nation can hold the world hostage if it possesses what all require. Taiwan has semiconductors; Australia, Myanmar, Thailand, rare earths. Climate hounds refugees across borders. Water, weather, disease, air traffic – none respects a line on a map. The Nameless One’s vision of a defiant self-sufficient colonizing America derives from some Disneyesque coloring book. Listen again to Dr. Donne:
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNo man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
A revised America must relearn its role on earth as kindergartners must learn to play together. Civility, generosity, manners, taking turns are preconditions of civilization no less than the classroom. Morality is no namby-pamby nice-to-have but a survival tool.
We’ve got work to do.