Elegy for America

Author's note

As expected, I am much more myself now. But I feel the observations here are important to make. Something more kickass for tomorrow.

***

No, I don't have mixed feelings about the indictment. Nail Donald Trump to the wall.

But I have very mixed feelings about our Republic.

If you had told me in my youth that a sitting president would foment a mob-led coup attempt in order to remain in office after he had been defeated in a free and fair election, I would have laughed, and looked at you oddly. If you had told me that this same person would be defended to the hilt by his party, rather than cast out as a verminous traitor, I would have said that you were engaging in wild partisanship.

I'm far from innocent. But as an American, the thing we could rely on was one administration transferring power to the next one. Indeed, every four years this was heralded as the mark of our superiority to other nations.

However, this may have simply been a lie we told ourselves.

Richard Nixon resigned. But it was the threat of having Republicans pull support for him which pushed him to leave office. Ronald Reagan won the presidency partly by getting the Iranian mullahs to delay the release of the American hostages. George W. Bush should have lost Florida, save for an intervention by a conservative Supreme Court. Donald Trump accepted help from foreign adversaries to secure the West Wing.

And now this. After having been beaten fairly, he knew his life was over. He knew that Joe Biden's administration would investigate all his crimes. And President Biden was not afraid of upsetting the apple cart. He would not go along to get along. Trump had upended that gentleman's agreement by his words and deeds, which showed that he wanted to establish a personal dictatorship. He threw out the old rules; those rules would not save him. So he connived and conspired to throw out an election in which he lost, and didn't care that it would destroy the country were he to be successful. America has had many bad presidents; but none of sunk to Trump's level of depravity.

What we've learned over these years is that all that we came to rely on was a result of accepted norms. And when someone came along who did not respect those norms, the system shook and quaked. The sense of two centuries of safety was jettisoned when a man with no morals and no scruples refused to play by rules which he saw as being hindrances to his goals. A sociopath was in the West Wing, and he acted like a sociopath, and our system was not built to deal with his kind in power.

Yes, I'm gladdened that our system did, in fact, hold, and is now bringing Trump and his minions to account. But I can't hide that all of this sickens me. It sickens me to my core. 

I'm no flag-waving patriot. But I believe in this country. I'm a student of history, and yes, America is different than any nation which has come before it, or which exists now, warts and all. And to see this scum traduce it wounds me. Trump and his ilk subvert the very meanings of our founding documents, while braying that only they are its guarantors. They take knives to our ideals, while saying they're the only true Americans. They laugh at our traditions, while cloaking themselves in tradition. And anyone with any sense of decency or, yes, patriotism would find this intolerable.

I want all of you to celebrate. And, frankly, by the time this thread posts, I'll be there myself. But as of this writing I have an overweening sadness. We've survived, and we're taking back our country. Those are no small things. But the cost will not be cheap. All because of men and women who have no concern for this American experiment, who see their fellow citizens as servants, not as equals in a commonwealth.

But there's always hope. And this is what success should be, not what hucksters like Trump lie to their followers about. Life is not to be found in wealth and power. Life is to be found in life lived with joy. And joy is something they will never experience.

Postscript

Thank you all for allowing me to vent my sadness. There's no other bunch of rapscallions with whom I'd rather go through historic events than you all.