It's New Year's Eve. It's been an exhausting year. It has, at times, been a very happy year. But, for the most part, it feels like it has been a year of survival.
I am deeply grateful for two things, both of them grandchild-related. My oldest granddaughter, who suffers from a series of congenital heart defects, had her third and hopefully final round of open-heart surgery this year, and came through it very well, thanks to the truly amazing physicians and medical staff of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. She started kindergarten this past fall and, apart from a need for extra napping, she is doing very well in it. Her life going forward is going to be a series of challenges. But she is strong and brave and smart, and I'm grateful for each chance I get to spend with her and her younger sister.
And they welcomed a cousin into the world a little under two weeks ago! So I now have a grandson to go along with my granddaughters. They truly are the consolation of my later years, as well as my wife's later years. I look forward to getting to know him better over the coming year.
It has also been a year of disappointment on other fronts. This past fall, I was forced to resign from the board of a non-profit organization for which I had enjoyed the privilege of doing a lot of good work. The resignation was forced by circumstances beyond my control, and finding peace about that fact has taken a while. Frankly, it is still taking a while. But I believe I'll get there.
I find myself still wondering when I'm going to settle down and fixate on one type of work. I still want to be a lawyer, an actor, a preservationist, and a producer. That's in no particular order. I'm frankly not sure what I'm meant to be known for. I'm 61, and I still can't figure it out. My wife tells me that what stands out about me is versatility. Perhaps she's right about that. Maybe I'm not a starting outfielder or ace of the pitching staff. Maybe I'm more of a relief specialist or a utility player; more of a Bob Bailor than a Jim Palmer or Tom Seaver. If you can't forgive the baseball references, I'll understand.
As for politics, and the nation?
I think that it's been just about as bad as I expected it to be, with Trump and the Republicans in control of the White House and Congress. But, lately, I've also been thinking about something else.
I was reading this article on the Mother Jones Web site, about how decades of fire suppression have made the recent wildfires in California more intense and more deadly. I think there's a political metaphor to be found in that fact.
For almost 40 years, we have suppressed the destiny of this nation to become a more perfect union, to promote the general welfare as well as to provide for the common defense, to ensure justice and tranquility, to secure the future for our posterity. We have stood all of these ideals on their heads, in favor of an Orwellian formulation that claims that tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves, that spanning the globe with weapons ensures peace, and that freedom of religion is really the freedom of one religion to persecute all others.
And, ironic though it may be to do so, I am forced to ask a question, one that I think the next Democratic presidential candidate should ask in the final presidential debate in 2020:
Are you better off now than you were 40 years ago? For that matter, is America better off now than it was 40 years ago.
I think the response to that is going to be a prairie fire of populist, progressive activity such as we have not seen in almost a century. And I think that the Republicans would be well advised to work with it, rather than suppress it, lest its energy become destructive and turn violent. That, to borrow a phrase, is not a threat, but an unfortunate truth.
Because 40 or so years of reactionary Republican politics has pushed this 21st century back into the 19th. Don't believe me? Consider the fact that we have turned public welfare benefits into a slush fund for local politicians. Or the fact that we can now allow public officials to throw people in jail because they are poor. Or that employers can allow employees to die in unsafe working conditions, and get little more than a slap on the wrist.
Is it any wonder that, at long last, there are signs that the Trump voters are finally waking up? And, when I say signs, I mean quite literally signs.
And is it any wonder that Trump himself feels embattled, with every day a matter of political survival?
For that matter, it's not just Trump who's in danger, it's his party as well. Again, for the past 40 years, the party of millionaires has managed to fool people into thinking that it is really the party of working-class Americans. But there are signs that the end of that masquerade may very well be at hand. Maybe it doesn't help to go around talking about paying for your investor-class tax cuts by cutting Social Security and Medicare. Maybe it also doesn't help if the party is in the middle of its own civil war over whether or not to support its own president.
That's why it's no longer time to be afraid of talking about impeachment. Impeachment, as this author says, is just another way of correcting a mistake. In this case, a colossal one.
And it's no longer time to be afraid of the progressive wildfire. It will come, whether American wants it to come or not, because America needs it, or America will die. It may die anyway, if we make the wrong response to it.
I'm betting we won't make that mistake. I'm counting on it. For my grandchildren, and for yours.
Happy New Year to all of you. Thanks for reading THR. May 2018 bring you all the blessings you deserve.
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