It is a Sunday evening at the cottage. Jazz is playing, the lights splash the creek. I have made myself a martini. It was a typical Sunday, up early, read the NY Times and a few articles from the WSJ online before the shower and then off to church, where I did the readings and then coffee hour, errands before settling at the Dot for a long and lazy brunch, reading more off my phone and chatting with a few people, home to the cottage, put away laundry, got the trash together and sat down to write.
Very hygge.
Because I need the steady rhythm of familiar things in this Age of Trump.
His aides were caught off guard when he extended an invitation to President Duterte of the Philippines to come visit him during a Saturday call. If you haven’t been following it, President Duterte has been accused of extra-judicial killings in that country’s current “drug war.” Now those surprised aides are preparing for an avalanche of criticism as it’s hard to find a world leader disliked as much as Duterte by pretty much everyone.
Then, after unleashing a problem for everyone around him, Mr. Trump jetted off to Harrisburg, PA for a campaign style rally to “record breaking crowds,” where he railed to his supporters about the media which was, at the same time, roasting him in DC, even if he was not there. In two events, the official White House Correspondents’ Dinner and the Samantha Bee hosted “Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner” withered the sitting President, the first to have missed this event since 1981, when Ronald Reagan was recuperating from an assassin’s attack.
I wake up in the morning and find I am in a state of continuing bemusement in what is going on in Washington. It is reality television, which is what we should have expected when we elected a reality television star to the Presidency. With Reagan, we had an actor who knew how to deliver his lines. There aren’t really “lines” in reality television. There is direction but no script. We have a President who is making up his script as he goes along, knowing he knows better than everyone else. Even if he doesn’t.
The WSJ, a deeply conservative publication, to which I now subscribe, seems to be wanting to support him and just can’t find a way not to point out that it’s all a little…off.
And it is more than a little off.
Reince Priebus, White House Chief of Staff, said the White House was looking at ways of changing the libel laws to make it easier to for Trump to sue media organizations who criticize him. Imagine how the Democrats responded to that, not to mention many Republicans? Not pretty. Do we not remember the First Amendment? Or is Trump being inspired by Erdogan of Turkey who has been arresting thousands of people he suspects of being disloyal while cracking down on the press? Cracking down makes it sound nice. He is dismantling any vocal opposition to him.
One thing we should note is that the economy grew at the slowest rate in three years in the first quarter of Trump. Maybe it’s a holdover from Obama or maybe it’s the fear of Trump.
We are in a political Wild West except in this Wild West we have nuclear weapons.
It’s a dark time in American democracy and we need to remember, in this “of the moment” world in which we live, this has not been the only dark time in American democracy. We had the Civil War, dark time. We survived Andrew Jackson, a really, really not nice President [who, by the way, our current President seems to identify with].
We will, God willing, live through this.
In the meantime, I will play jazz. I will drink martinis. I will write and I will hope, because without hope we have nothing.
Letter From Claverack 07 04 2017 Thoughts from the creek on Independence Day…
July 4, 2017It is as idyllic as it can be here at the cottage. On an achingly clear day, the sun shines brightly through the green leaves of the trees. A bee buzzes somewhere, the creek is so clear you can see its bed, the air is filled with the thrumming of insects and a soft wind moves the leaves gently.
My coffee is strong and I am slowly rising into the day, the Fourth of July, 2017. My nephew, Kevin, is asleep in the guest room and it is so wonderful to be here, in this spot, enjoying the beginning of this day.
Kevin prepping for a game of backgammon.
It has been a blessing to have been here this spring and now summer, to see the earth return from winter’s sleep, bloom green and touch the peace of this spot. Not far away, a deep throated frog croaks, signaling.
All of this is a treasure and a privilege and a boon to my sanity.
As I sat here, on this day which celebrates the birth of the United States of America, I was thinking what a messy birth and history it has been. It means so much to, I think, all of us and yet those individual meanings are all mixed and jumbled, and so infused with anger. The Week’s cover for June 30th had a “Blue” and a “Red” American glowering at each other, with a line asking whether “Are Red and Blue America headed for a divorce?” The article is about a culture of rage.
And, as we live through this time in our country’s history, with the very real sense of rage on both sides of the political spectrum, I am doing my best to remember that the history of this country, for better or worse, has been driven by a sense of rage. From the Boston Tea Party through our current Trumpian dystopia, there has been rage.
We didn’t part peacefully from England, we warred our way to independence.
We fought a Civil War from which, quite frankly, I don’t think we have ever recovered.
We have assassinated four presidents and there have been numerous other attempts which didn’t succeed. Yes, violence is in our American DNA.
We ripped this land from Native Americans, dragged captives from Africa to work that land as slaves, built our version of the Athenian Empire and are now, and may always be, attempting to reconcile all the ugly facets of America with all the beautiful things it has been and can be.
Immigrants have flooded here from the beginning. Each new wave was met with hostility by those who had come before.
It is ironic but not surprising that one of our current flashpoints is immigration.
An acquaintance of mine, a young Rabbi, recalled his immigrant grandmother hiding as a girl as mobs ran through New York’s streets, screaming, “Kill the Jews!”
America has been and is an experiment and other countries are experiencing our challenges. The relative homogeneity of Europe is being challenged by the flood of migrants sweeping in, seeking a better life as did the millions who flocked to America, also seeking something better.
Change is hard and unwanted change is often met with rage. We are a country constantly changing so it is not surprising we are raging. Because of the acceleration of communication capabilities, we are more knitted together than with greater challenges in finding veracity.
I savor my idyllic spot and cling to the hope that reconciliation will come. Not in my lifetime, I know, but at some point, America will hopefully become what so many politicians have called us, the bright and shining city upon the hill.
Let us remember this as we close out this year’s celebrations, let us face each other with the light and love Christ had when He, in the Sermon on the Mount, provided the base message for Winthrop, Kennedy, Reagan and others.
Tags:4th of July, City on the Shining Hill, Civil War, Claverack Creek, immigration, John F. Kennedy, Kevin Malone, Trumpian dystopia, USA
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