"Let's put our heads together
And start a new country up
Our father's father's father tried
Erased the parts he didn't like
Let's try to fill it in"
-Cuyahoga, REM
A raw but lovely morning on the farm.
On the left edge you can see the slab where the porch stood before Helene, now all scraped. It wasn't much of a porch, I guess. In the foreground is the poor key lime tree we planted during the pandemic. Every freeze it nearly dies; this time may be the last one. I would've figured it might try to bud out by now, but so far nada.
We drove over last night after my big hearing and some bloodwork that revealed I'm a fading old man. The plan had been to go out and show the family flag in PC last night, let everyone know we were still around, but I'm so in my own head about the state of the country and these people's responsibility for it that the risk of me having a couple Jameson's and telling my neighbors what I really thought was simply too high. So we came home, visited with Dio, watched a little TV, and called it an early night.
Yesterday marked a new low for us as a country, probably not the bottom. Hell, we likely can't even see the bottom from here. The last administration left us in a good place, with a thriving economy and a leadership role on the national stage. Yesterday marked Day 30 of the coup, and the day we sold out Ukraine and the rest of Europe to enter an alliance with the enemy, the perpetual enemy, the Russians. We literally switched sides in the middle of a war. The only country that comes to mind for that sort of betrayal in the clutch was Italy, which switched sides a year into World War I looking for more land, and in World War II because they were losing badly. Not a martial example we've ever tried to emulate.
Why did we switch sides? Vance explained to the Europeans last week that the real threat wasn't the huge army a thousand miles to the east committing mass atrocities while their leader suggests they won't stop there. No sir, it's the "enemy within", by which I reckon he means our post-Enlightenment history of political pluralism, individual liberty, and the rule of law. He wouldn't meet with the German Chancellor, choosing instead to spend his time with the leader of the fascist party there.
Because that's who we are now, fascists. No better than Russia; worse actually, because one senses the Russian leadership is fairly smart and worldly, with clearly defined goals they're accomplishing by playing the Salamander in Chief. Our leadership, such as it is, is simply shambolic, a kakistocracy of the very worst our country has to offer.
And my neighbors voted for this. The guys who flew with me in the war, all of whom took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign, and domestic, voted for this. I blame all of them, don't want to share any space with them, never want to see or hear from any of them again. Traitors all.
Life is a process of losing one's illusions, until eventually you're alone in a small, urine scented room in a diaper with nothing left. I'd long since lost my religion over the last few years, but so much of who I thought I was anchored itself in a rather idealistic patriotism. My family fought the nation's wars, lived the American dream by emerging from Pennsylvania coal mines and Mississippi dirt farms to embark on great careers and raise our families. I was always so grateful for what this country held itself out to be, what I believed (rather than thought or observed) it to be.
That's gone now, too. I told Peg as we were lying in bed this morning right after dawn that I didn't think I could make it through all this without her. We're what's left, we two. And now I feel a strange, sad nostalgia for the adventure that began five years ago with our quarantine at the farm during the outset of Covid, and our New York adventure together in the years that followed.
Most of those were the Biden years, as I think of it. I felt like a nightmare that came to a head on January 6th for this country had finally come to an end, and we could look toward the future with a cautious optimism. A real gift at this age.
“Back then I thought, 'Well, there'll be other days.' I didn't realize that that was the only day”. So said Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams. It sort of sums up where we find ourselves now.
I'm going to stop writing for a while, maybe a month. Maybe longer. It's all become too mawkish and maudlin. Jesus said not to leave our lamp under a bushel, but maybe a funeral wreath for this country and this time is best not displayed for the world to see.