I’m living a life of quiet desperation at the moment, for nothing is hoving into view on the sportive horizon. I have, as Georgie and her peers say, reached out, though no one thus far has reached out to me. I guess I’ll go on reaching out. Surely something (or someone) will turn up. . . .
I have been through this kind of thing before, only to have my cup running over in the end, which is all right with me: I’d much rather have too much to write about than too little, for if you have too little you have to use your imagination.
When it comes to the imagination, I was thinking that if I were a genie, I would alchemize a Democratic candidate who could beat Caesar Disgustus. He or she would have to think on his or her feet and be witty — a perfect foil for the perfect caller, who could slay the dragon with the mere arch of a brow.
And this amalgam of a candidate would have that je ne sais quoi — that “something,” as my late stepmother used to say — that would render him or her compelling in others’ eyes. Kennedy had it. Obama too. And Reagan. I haven’t seen such a one thus far. I wish the self-described democratic socialist were more sociable, for he, as far as I know, was the first to put his finger on the problem, to wit, that freedom (however relative a term that may be) has been transmogrified into greedom.
People could view democracy variously, Theodore Parker said in an 1848 sermon. One could hew to the motto: “You are as good as I, and let us help one another,” a tenet in keeping with the Declaration of Independence and the New Testament. Or one could say, “I am as good as you, so get out of my way,” a motto antithetical to the Declaration and the New Testament — more or less, it seems, what is going on now.
In the end, I think (though I may not be around to see it) Sanders’s analysis will win out, for he’s got the young on his side. When the rough edges have been taken off laissez-faire capitalism, when a good education is the norm, when a period of community service is required of every citizen, and when health care gouging is no longer. When our polity has become a comity, in brief.
Meanwhile, if only Michael Bloomberg, who while he may fund many charities, strikes me, at least thus far, as not being very charitable, could develop a sense of humor.