Having been around this town for two of the nation's three impeachments and the painful Richard Nixon saga, I have come to some conclusions about politics in America.
It is very predictable.
We seem to have a basic need to tear things up, make a big mess, get furious with each other, sometimes come to blows, get distracted by an outside war or making money or different beliefs about what women can do with their bodies, calm down for a while and then start the whole process all over again.
It is infuriating, counterproductive and inevitable. We are a huge country with volatile tempers and strongly held beliefs and patriotic fervor and selfish inclinations and a penchant for being mesmerized by controversial personalities. Our history is full of mischief and mistakes, including the Civil War. Could such an unthinkable thing happen again? Possibly. Probably.
The good news is that at the local level, we are good people. We help our neighbors and hold church suppers to raise money for good causes and vote and get wound up over making our communities better. For the most part, we believe in and practice civility with each other.
After natural disasters, we are a model of people helping each other.
Yes, we elected an immoral man who trash talks his critics, who has no long-term vision of America, who paid women not to talk about alleged affairs with him, who separates children from their parents and puts them in cages, who tried to bribe a foreign leader to manufacture dirt on a potential political opponent, who has used our highest office to enrich himself and his family, who is ridiculed by other leaders, who panders to Americans' worst instincts.
But we have had bad leaders before — segregationists, racists, men without morals, men who manufactured wars and killed thousands of people. We have had leaders who were hypocrites and abusers of power. We have seen the thin veneer of civilization ripped off, time and time again.
