IT'S NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK...

One of the pluses of being a student of history is that it's easier not to suffer undue anxiety over the current state of affairs of the United States of America. Having recently finished biographies and historical novels covering the period of the founding of our country (Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow, c. 2004) and of the Civil War and aftermath (Grant, by Jean Edward Smith, c. 2001), I have a better perspective on how dire our straits are right now and how important the next two elections (2018 midterms and 2020 presidential) are to the continuation of this democracy.

My response to people who think if we don't impeach Donald Trump that we will sink into Fascism is that we need to look at the reverse: where would we be with a president just as awful on policy grounds but who is not so vulgar, narcissistic, abusive, and offensive- say, a Mike Pence. Or worse, a president just as cruel and abusive as Trump, but who was cunning and intelligent and who had an actual agenda (say, a Ted Cruz, whom I thought in early 2016 was the worse of the two remaining candidates).

My hope is that Trump can manage to stay in office at least through the first Tuesday in November to continue to motivate people to go to the polls, because there are more of us (the decent people who don't want to use power to abuse minority groups) then there are of them (the bad guys- although they don't see themselves that way when they look in the mirror- right, Jay Brimberry?). So, just to lend a bit of historical perspective, on this 155th anniversary of the battle at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, between Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia and George Meade's Army of the Potomac, a brief look back at true dire straits is helpful. This was the battle that decided the war, and the greatest speech by an American president, now written in stone at his memorial in Washington, might give us some hope:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."