Point of View: A Sign?
I’ve finally gotten to the Bible my mother gave me at long last, but as yet have found no salvation in it, perhaps because I’ve not advanced far beyond the psalmist’s prayers to the jealous Old Testament God to smite his enemies.
There was a whole lot of smitin’ goin’ on long before the Psalms, of course — blows apportioned pretty much indiscriminately, sweeping away tens of thousands at a whack. I don’t have it with me, so I can’t cite you chapter and verse, but it’s pretty off-putting in general. Why would anyone offer fealty to such a Tyrant? I ask that a bit rhetorically, for we’re still doing so, paying obeisance to tyrants, to rabid ranters, egoists who would have it their way, who laugh at fair play.
A Midwesterner I met recently apparently has already thrown in the towel. No one, he said, would be able to beat Trump, at least while the Electoral College still existed. The people in his town, he said, remained fans, despite the sleaze, despite the scary instability, despite the frothing. Had they no moral compasses, I asked, mouth agape.
“The only thing they care about is themselves and their almighty dollars,” he said. “They’ve got theirs and they don’t care about anyone else.”
“How about Nancy Pelosi?”
“No, not even Nancy Pelosi. He’s going to get two terms.”
“I can’t believe it. . . .”
“Well, you don’t live in the Midwest.”
“Greed is the new compassion then?”
He agreed that things seem to be topsy-turvy these days, where displays of fellow feeling are greeted with calumny, where temperate behavior provokes jeers, catcalls.
I thought, We’re going down just like Notre Dame. Could it be? Or can we rebuild it? America, I mean. It will take some doing, some concentrated all-for-one, one-for-all effort, just as it will to rebuild Notre Dame.
Though seeing the ancient cathedral afire was so sad and dispiriting, perhaps it was a sign. We can’t let things fall apart. I would think that Midwesterners, especially of the younger generation, to which Pete with the unpronounceable surname seems to appeal, would agree.