Everyone is telling you to be of good cheer. I’m trying. Before I forget, Merry Christmas.
And then there is Bah Humbug all around us. In a national address to the nation the other evening, the President told us that we had never had it so good. He told us we had the best economy in our history, and he implied that he might be a greater president than, well, Abraham Lincoln. And yet.
Our leader is an expert at the big story. It’s a standard strategy for those in power and those seeking power: tell the big lie because they are more likely to believe it than the small stories you could tell. So it is not unreasonable to think that a whole lot of people believe what they hear coming out of the White House.
The White House. Now there is something to be upset about. The home and office of the president are supposed to be simple, not grand like the palaces of Europe. We are a democracy, not a kingdom. Remember?
The Oval Office, that sacred ground of American power and grand simplicity, has been destroyed to the level of heresy. The desecration has reduced it to just another room. The mystic is gone. The symbol of world power looks like a decorator with no taste was let loose. It is gaudy, it is cliché, it is ugly. It proves money doesn’t buy class. It is embarrassing.
The East Wing brings new fury, ripped from its connection to the White House. For what? For a ballroom bigger than the rest of the building, out of proportion to the rest of the site. It will take months to tear it down, if it ever gets built, after The Don leaves office. Could the place use a ballroom? Sure, but in proportion and without the glitz.
But back to the economy and stuff. If things are as good as we are told, why is the country in such a funk? We know that we have a pretty strong economy, but not the greatest. The polls are pretty much in agreement. The President’s numbers are in the toilet. Poll after poll indicates that the folks don’t think he is doing a good job managing the economy, the European war, the state of manufacturing, and most other issues. He does get reasonable marks for his efforts to reduce illegal immigration and close the border, but people don’t like how he is doing it.
We are not a country that sends masked men to pull people off the street and whisk them away in unmarked cars. We don’t put people on planes and send them to countries that will jail them for no reason. But we are becoming that kind of country.
Christmas letters are supposed to be uplifting, but too much is changing for the worse to be bright and shiny. We are paying too much for food, for gas, for entertainment, for basics like water and home energy. Too many will start the year with health insurance they can’t afford or no insurance at all. That is when the ER becomes the primary care provider, and our rates increase to pay for it.
There are three more years of this craziness before a term limit kicks in. My positive side says we will survive this. We survived the Civil War. We survived Teapot Dome. We survived other threats to democracy. We beat fascism in Europe, and we beat the Empire of Japan’s threat in Asia. We survived McCarthyism.
We can replace the new signs on the Kennedy Center and other buildings in DC. We can, with time, remove the Amazon-grade glitz from the Oval Office and the rest of the White House.
Based on what has happened this year, I shudder to think
of what could happen in the next three. But there is hope for a better
tomorrow. There has to be.
We still have great universities that are the envy of the world. We have local people trying every day to make their communities better and safer. We have millions of people in the streets across the country protesting the destruction of our institutions. When the people rise up, the people win. People can only wield power when we let them. So there is hope.
Let’s make our hope a positive force to help our
democracy survive. Knowing we can do it gives me a much-needed brighter outlook
as we end one year and begin another.
Happy New Year!!!
