Epilogue… Or Prologue…
1968 was a series of hammer blows, one pain after another. 1969 was worse, the harrowing that followed. Not just broken bones but a kind of constant gnawing of our insides that ate out of us the core of American character, including our faith, hope, and charity as a people. Nothing in our nation has been the same since that year. We are coarser, lazier of thought, greedier in venal ways that would have appalled our parents. That was 50 years ago.
2018 was likewise a series of hammer blows, most importantly in terms of the body politic, where the root word “polity” finally proved itself an oxymoron if not a joke. The year was dominated by a ramping up of the most concerted attempt to destroy a sitting president by the mere expedients of never ceasing to accuse him, month after month after month, and then formalizing this obsession into an entity unto itself, called an investigation but consisting in reality of the equivalent of a SWAT team breaking into every home, and life, of the prime suspect’s family, friends, associates, and acquaintances, with the usual TV FBI result — no one home.
if 2019 follows the 50 year cycle of repetition, the coming year will be as loud as the continuously escalating liberal media hatred of Richard Nixon and as subtle as the unheralded arrival in this country of AIDS. Events will be not singly catastrophic but continuous, a deliberate and cynical death of a thousand cuts that may very well leave many of us gasping and enervated from loss of energy even to watch what is happening in our country for another day.
Maybe the Fates will be kind and spare us this sapping ordeal. But I fear not. In so many ways, like the children of the Sixties, we have asked for this, participated in it to some degree or at least failed to stand up strongly against it. Which means we likely deserve what we have brought upon ourselves.
You are, of course, free to disagree.