EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CHANGE

Events of this week have touched me to and amazing extent. First of all, they demonstrated once again how wrong I could be.

Yes wrong.

I had avowed that the drag on one political party was the thought that a mixed-race Californian as a vice-presidential candidate would be come president sometime before 2029. America wasn’t ready.

Seems I was wrong.

So what happened?

I’m thinking the events caused some sort of cosmic shift in our national psyche. That happens, often negatively. Look at what happened in my part of the country when America elected an African American president. Bigotry didn’t simply emerge as valid political weapon. It exploded like a dormant volcano.

No, this enervated something good and decent in our genetic banks. Maybe America was tired of the sight of two grumpy old men dominating the media and our national psyche.

Sometimes we just want to see the image of what we think America needs. I think it happened to some extent with the emergence of Ronald Reagan as a presidential candidate. After the nightmare of the Nixon debacles, America longed for a kindly old uncle, or at least an actor who could play one.

Too late we discovered that our kindly old uncle wasn’t averse to taxing Social Security payments so the rich could pay less taxes.

But now.

Now I think we want to see a fresh face of decency. We remember civility. We remember love of country. We remember respect for our military personnel. The so-called “suckers and losers,” along with their friends and families, longed for some sense of decorum.

At any rate, the news has shaken things up. One can tell by the reaction of the opposing party. I longed for an apt description. I searched and researched my memory.

Finally it came, attributable I think to Henry Miller in his Tropic of Cancer:

They are sh*****g arpeggios.

Yep.