This country has long been appalling and astonishing in equal measure, but these days the opportunities to be appalled are mounting by the day, and the sort of astonishment America most commonly traffics in is more and more often the stuff of incredulity and shock rather than genuine and appreciative wonder.
Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that we are governed by a legion of nitwits and bland, blindly ambitious louts, an almost incomprehensibly undistinguished group of career politicians presided over by an imbecile who is rapidly approaching vulnerable adult status. An imbecile who favors gargantuan belt buckles of the sort most often associated with characters who make a living being tossed from bulls. A stwaggering (half staggering, half swaggering) imbecile who gives new meaning to the term “invalid,” and is possessed of a tragic and cocksure set of delusions of adequacy.
How else to explain how it is that we have found ourselves living in a country where the horizon always seems to blurred with the bruise of some recent horror or pending tragedy?
We could blame ourselves, of course. I’m all for that. And we could certainly blame each other, whatever and whomever we might include under that leaky umbrella of “each other.” The above-mentioned imbecile, after all, has twice had his position of power conferred upon him by people I could not now with a straight face or a clean conscience refer to as “my fellow Americans.”
Every day –and many times throughout every day– I am blindsided by despair at the thought that I am out of token opportunities to officially reject the imbecile who is the President of the United States, and also by the recognition that the ultimate refutation of everything he stands for will now be the responsibility of history, which has a pretty poor track record of responsibility in such matters.
My own refutation, of course, is strictly unofficial, and more irrational (and complete) by the day.
The other thing we could all do at the moment, in response to the horrors and embarrassments of this country and this administration, would be to simply look away. Many people, of course, will and do choose this option, and though it’s tempting, I don’t recommend it.
Instead I’d recommend you take a good long look at what’s happening and where we are. And hold out hope: hold onto it, and also extend it (a seeming contradiction whose real possibility is a testament to the versatility of hope), offer as much of it as you can spare to someone who needs it more than you do. There are always plenty –too many– of those people out there.
Make of your refutation an action and an embrace, however small and ultimately unsatisfying.
Here are some ways that you can hold out your hope, all of them good ways:
The Humane Society’s Disaster Relief Fund
Glenn Reynolds has an excellent round-up of flood/hurricane relief efforts at Instapundit
And finally, as usual, there’s a great collection of links at Peter Scholtes’ always virtuous (and exhaustive) Complicated Fun. Peter’s on my short list of local candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize.
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