At the end of Chekhov's 1901 drama, The Three Sisters, the lives of the three young ladies lie in ruins. The fiancé of the youngest, Irina, has just been killed in a duel. The lover of the middle sister, Masha, has gone out of her life forever. Olga, the eldest, has never found anyone to love at all, and probably never will. At the end of the play, Irina lays her head on Olga's bosom and says the following:
A time will come when everyone will know what this is for, why there is this misery; there will be no mysteries, and, meanwhile we have got to live...
It's the old belief that progress, including progress of the soul, is inevitable. I wish I could be that sanguine. An old man, I have come to terms with my own mortality, but I didn't expect that the institutions that have made this country great--the separation of powers, free speech and a free press, etc--not only would grow weak with me, but, especially if our current president is elected for a second term, might even die before I do.
Old age often comes with an umbrella of serenity that protects and gives perspective while armies of angry passers-by struggle and fight in the rain. "We'll get over this," a woman older than I recently told me. I'd like to believe her, but I'm not so sure. My umbrella has holes.
On October 9, 2019, the day I turned 74, Fact Checker determined that Trump had made 13,435 lies or misleading statements since his inauguration. His partiality for Putin and other dictators is obvious. He is without a doubt a racist. The current treatment of refugees at the southern border is shameful.Trump has appointed greedy oligarchs, many of them good friends of Charles Koch and other billionaires, to serve in his cabinet. (This he calls "draining the swamp"). His administration has made what is the crisis of our time, climate change, significantly worse. Yes, this is only a partial list of the mess we are in. The oligarchs, thanks in part to the dreadful Citizens United ruling, have Uncle Sam in a choke hold. Will he survive?
I remember Watergate very well and assure you that the current political situation is much worse.
Trump is arguably the worst president in the history of the United States. I understand he can't help it. For him, that which is good is that which supports him--a textbook definition of an amoral person. He serves himself, not the United States or its people. Scandals and corruption--what else can one expect from a narcissist as needy as Trump?
As I wrote before, Trump, at the apex of a pyramid of power, would fall flat on his face if there were no bricks and mortar supporting him. Approximately the upper third of this pyramid consists of Republicans in the House and especially in the Senate, who continue to support this incompetent president. The lower part of the pyramid, the base, is supported by, well, his base.
Trump might well be too pathological to change; that the Republicans, who have a choice to serve the country or themselves have to date chosen the latter is truly appalling. Even more appalling is the behavior of Mitch McConnell, who has earned his sobriquet, Moscow Mitch.
The lower blocks, his supporters among the general population alas! still stand by their man. They are angry--as Bernie Sanders has stated, they have a right to be angry, but they are angry for the wrong reasons. Some can't be won over; many, however can. Hillary Clinton tried to convey this by her misguided "basket of deplorables" metaphor. She said that half of Trump's supporters fit into this category; the other half, however, consists of good people who have been led astray. They can be reached. (Clinton, however, made little effort to try to reach them).
Democracy to a large part depends on an informed populace; this brings me to a peeve of mine, the entertainment industry. I have seen interviews of passers-by, many of whom couldn't answer the most basic civics questions. Knowledge of history was in many cases woefully deficient. ("Who won the Civil War?" "I dunno"). Yet everyone knew about the latest hit by Taylor Swift. Wouldn't it be nice if people stopped using social media so much and stopped watching cable so much and spent some of their day reading and thinking?
Our Constitution is under attack. It might take a generation to undo the damage that has already been done. When will this misery end?
Chekhov's three sisters were convinced that better times were coming. What actually came was World War l, which initiated fifty years of unprecedented brutality and destruction.
Martin Luther King believed that the long arc of history favors truth and decency. He might be right, but I don't think we'll see the pot of gold at the end of this rainbow any time soon, however. King believed he had "been to the mountaintop" and had seen "the Promised Land." "I might not get there with you," he said, but we as a people will get there.
I would like to believe it. Current events, however, have led me to a different mountaintop; chaos and dissolution lie on the other side. An old man, I might not get there with you--thank God!
Please do your very best to prove me wrong.
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