I don’t usually feel my age, and that’s partly because of the experiences I have shared with like-minded people, events that gave me a general sense of hope and optimism. One of those great experiences happened during the sixties, when I taught effervescent baby boomers in Madison. The experience showed me how a whole civilization could become more tolerant and inclusive.
How different the smell of revolution is today! The spirit of change we feel three days before a malodorous presidential election gives me a sense of unease. It reminds me of Thoreau’s wondering why we always level downward to our dullest perception, and praise that as common sense. He goes on to say, “The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring.”
This weekend I am overcome with a strange sense of powerlessness as I look uneasily across the border. Rather than a contest between two sparring political parties, I see two monolithic factions threatening to bring a cleaver down on the democratic apparatus, each so enraged as to suggest that the candidate of the other party should be in jail.
This has happened in a country I left almost fifty years ago, when the United States still saw itself as the bright city on a hill, shining like a beacon to the world. Three hundred years into the experiment, its form of government could still serve as a model for other countries. But what wafts up from the south now is an inescapable odor of rotting principles, reeking of gunpowder and horse manure.
It is not easy to enjoy these interesting times because they affect the nose too strongly.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apology to my faithful reader(s?): Please excuse the olfactory unpleasantness. I could have used more pleasant imagery, but it would have clashed with the subject matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment