“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens wrote in 1859 at the beginning of a novel set in the 1790s. ” It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present
Dickens’ words transcend the centuries
period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
The amazing thing is that Dickens was right then and he’s still right today. The election just passed was the most important one in our lives, it marked a critical juncture in American history. But so was the one before that, and the one before that, and the one before that.
The 1st election I can remember was Kennedy-Nixon, when I was 6 years old. We would walk home from school, in a working class neighborhood in Des Moines, Iowa, and half of us would be chanting “Kennedy, Kennedy, he’s our man, Nixon belongs in a garbage can!” and the other half would be chanting the exact same thing, with the names reversed. The election was painfully close (and quite probably fraudulent – it’s possible to be a liberal and still realize that the Kennedy’s are not exactly squeaky clean). The country was just as divided then as it is now.
It is not surprising that a Romney supporter in Arizona tried to kill her husband (and damned near succeeded) because he didn’t vote, or that people in some 30 states are circulating petitions to secede from the union. All of this has happened before, and all of this will fade away.
Obamacare will be popular, and eventually improved and enhanced. The rich will have to pay a trifling amount extra in taxes and the economy will improve. Not as much as a lot of people will like, but it will improve. Scientists will continue to discover new planets, inventors will continue to invent stuff, music and art will continue to evolve.
A new president will be elected in 2016 and 2020 and so on. Mars will be colonized. Everybody will have a robot. And the election of 2112 will be described as the most important one ever, one that will irreversibly affect the course of human history.
And that description will be true.
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Thanks Willie. Very apt! We had a phone bank going here at our senior residence for our local Democratic Congressional candidate.( The district is as large as Connecticut, mostly rural and Republican. It includes Hyde Park, which didn’t even vote for its own FDR back then.) The Iraq war hero running for the Republicans models himself as a moderate, but voted with the Tea Party on most issues and believes global warming is caused by sunspots. He won.
How are you? What’s doing with you personally?
Hi, Aunt Lucille! Glad you’re reading the blog. Things are going really well in my life. Teaching (mostly children), writing a lot (this blog is just the tip of the iceberg) and enjoying life. My two kids are getting bigger every day, so there are always new surprises.