Patti Smith did a wonderful stand-in job at the Oslo Nobel Prize award for literature given to Bob Dylan. She couldn't get through the powerful lyrics without her voice cracking. I can understand why.
It seems every day brings another news story about a new appointment in the President-elect's new cabinet, or a preposterous, but true story of Russia hacking government and political organizations and planting information to sway the election and the President-elect denying its truth.
I hear of questionnaires being sent throughout the government agencies to identify everyone who was involved in climate change issues with the implied threat of some wholesale purge.
I talk to good-minded friends and acquaintances who voted for the fellow, folks who when presented with clear facts simply dismiss them all them all as lies or being irrelevant, who would as soon believe an unsubstantiated blog post on a political web site promoting a fascist world-view than factual evidence from educated persons, or history.
Mostly I hear of criticism of "big" government while I look at the great progress our government has made in eliminating industrial pollution that threaten the lives and welfare of our children and our children's. I drive by old super fund sites covered safely by parking lots, knowing what might have happened but for the Federal EPA insisting on a solution.
Mostly I recall a few weeks ago awaking up to an ever-present, overwhelming smokey atmosphere from forest fires, recalling that before people and "big" government woke up to the threat to health in Pittsburgh often one never saw the sun due to the heavy dark smog fed by the exhaust of coke-making ovens and steelmaking furnaces. We were told in the corporate headquarters of ALCOA in downtown Pittsburgh that the executives kept a fresh white shirt in the office to change at mid-day because the first one would be smudged and blackened by the sooty smog. Now we have relatiuvely clear air thanks to "big" government.
Mostly I recall the Coosa River flowing out of Rome past the old GE light industrial transformer plant whose effluent for 24 years filled the river with PCB's. I recall my grandfather who regularly fished crappie and catfish out of the river down by the old lock and dam, and wonder how much PCB infused his and our bodies before the "big" government let everyone know that the river and much of Lake Weiss was polluted by those PCB's and the fish were dangerous if not deadly to those who ate them, and forced a solution.
Mostly I recall the desolate red dirt of Copper Hill, TN burnt treeless from years of mining and unrestrained exposure to sulfurous fumes from the "free enterprise" copper refining indusrty, of the arsenic and other heavy metals left behind by that mining, that "big" government caused a repair..
Mostly I recall the terrible days of segregated life in my little home town of Rome, GA as well as throughout the South and how things changed as "big government" enforced a constitution that proclaimed the inalienable equality of every person. I think about how long it may have taken to right the wrong of segregation if the US Supreme Court of "big" government had not weighed in and if President Eisenhower had not had the Federal power to send troops to Little Rock, Arkansas. I think about what would have happened if we had not had the kind of "big"government that allowed Lyndon Johnson to confront Governor George Wallace and federalize National Guard troops to allow desegregation of the University of Alabama in 1963.
Mostly, I read of the lists of the choices by the President-elect (sic) for Supreme Court Justice to facilitate rolling back the decades of progress by "big" government in proclaiming and defending civil rights, women's rights and protecting our environment so hunters, fishermen and campers can enjoy it safely.
Mostly I look back at the time when most of the progress of civil society began in this country, much of it in the 1940's and1950's; and listen to these modern voters who never heard, or remember, the old saying by George Santayana "Those who forget the past are condemned to relive it."
Mostly I look at this retrograde chaos and weep knowing my days will likely end before the correction of this tragedy initiated by a distinct minority of the voters of the United States is accomplished.
Mostly I weep for those unimpassioned voters in key states who ignored the reality of their economic situation, who cut off their nose rather than vote (or vote at all) for a compromise rather than absolute victory.
Most though, mostly I look at the blue eyes of my sons and weep for their future, and for the future of their children and my neighbors' children who shall inherit this profound retrenchment from reason and sanity, and be the worst for it.
Mostly though, I weep for them as they are innocent and do not deserve the hard rain that is going to fall.
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