You may have suspected that sometimes I don’t know quite what I’m thinking.
Today was such a day. I was grasping at straws. I was thinking “carry on" not
in the sense of "muck about" but "shoulder the burden and get on with the
project the long nineteenth century started." Trump seems to me to be a
nineteenth century guy, voted in by people who embrace nostalgia... “Make
America Great Again.” I’ve no idea what reference point is intended. The
Eisenhower years? America invading Grenada? Washington crossing the Delaware?
The Pilgrims landing? Today is crabby garbage day and we have awoken to find
ourselves in the hands of an untrustworthy man. But the guy in movie I
watched, the real guy, a Scot, Hugh Glass, crawled and floated two hundred
miles to survive. Humans are an inventive bunch and we try hard. I think Trump
has an eddy vote, by which I mean he picked up people who feel the mainstream
is passing them by. They are a constant in history; the only odd thing is how
many there are of them today. Perhaps the delta’s mainstream is shifting. Bob
and I notice this kind of thing when crabbing in the bay, but that doesn’t
prevent us from running aground from time to time. We deal with this problem.
David Ritchie,
Portland,
current home of the
blues.------------------------------------------------------------------
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