So started off the Thanksgiving Day post last year. The one that was entitled:
The comment about hubris is exactly correct. Lots of bloggers put up posts like this, but frankly, there's no guaranty that anyone reads them or cares what you have to say about anything.
Moreover, this blog has zillions of posts as it often has more than one daily. Indeed, that's the case for today. There are a lot of Thanksgiving posts up for November 25, 2021. People might wonder how much time is actually devoted to this blog (not much), as that would be misleading. I should invest the small amount of time that goes into this into my slow moving novel, as it would read like War And Peace by now.
Well, anyhow, I wasn't particularly inclined to do this post this year, but given as there was one for the exceedingly odd year of 2020, and 2021 turned out to be a followup to it in oddness, I thought I would. Which leads me to this.
So much of what I wrote last year is even more the case now, that I was tempted to repeat a pile of it. As repeating an essay in its entirety just burdens the reader, who probably doesn't read it, I'm going to forego it, however.
It was already the case, of course, that Donald Trump had lost the 2020 Presidential Election. It wasn't clear to me, however, the extent to which he'd go on to full deny losing it, and the extent to which a large section of the American public would buy into that. Indeed, I was shocked just a month later when I heard for the first time somebody that I knew really well express the stolen election line. Just a little over a month following Thanksgiving the former Presidents acolytes would attempt to put him back in power while a full scale attempt at a coup was being engaged in by the former President's political minions and operatives. It failed, but only barely so.
Had it succeeded, I don't know that it would have succeeded, as odd as that may seem to state. The majority of Americans, and it was a majority for a second time, who voted against Donald Trump would not have accepted him as President, and it would have gone right to the United States Supreme Court. Predicting the Court is always difficult, but its first instinct is self-preservation, and I think it would have struck the effort down.
I also think there would have been violence, and I think that American democracy would have been damaged for generations. I'm not entirely certain that had the Supreme Court not have declared Trump's election invalid, that there wouldn't have been a violent removal. Advocates of force to cause something to occur frequently forget that the invitation of force often causes, in the human world, a greater, opposite, reaction.
We can all be thankful, therefore, that this scenario did not play out.
We can be worried, however, about what may develop going forward.
The US is now already on the list of countries, according to an international group, that has been backsliding on democracy as there's a large section of the Republican Party that actually believes what Trump has been saying. Trump remains the head of the GOP and will run again, assuming that his advanced old age doesn't catch up with him first. And also assuming that due process of law does not.
That's an open question. Mitch McConnell made it clear, during Trump's impeachment proceedings, that he was guilty of sedition. He hasn't been charged. It's not impossible that he shall not be. If he is, and I'd lay even money on it, that will create its own firestorm, reminding us once again why it is important to strike while the iron is hot, something that our society, led by it is by the ancient, increasingly has a very difficult time doing.
It might prove to be necessary, however, for this to occur in order for the Republican Party to overcome the direction it seems to be headed. Elements of it clearly want to.
Part of where it's headed in Wyoming is a dedicated effort to eject a Congressman whom conservatives loved prior to her deciding to stand her ground on principals. It's shocking. We don't know where this is headed yet, but there's reason to believe it will fail, and a reckoning may be coming inside the state itself.
Anyhow, as Americans head towards their Thanksgiving Day meals, there's less reason to be calm about the fate of the nation than there has been at any point since the Civil War. But there's some hope that we've started to very slowly round a corner.
And that's not all. Last year at this time COVID 19 vaccinations had not started. Now over half the eligible population in the country has been vaccinated, and the vaccines now extend down to childhood ages. There's real hope that the Pandemic may be beat, but there's still a bizarre politicization of the virus that continues to haunt the nation. And that's certainly something to be thankful for.
As part of this, this past week a person I knew, but I can't really say that I was friends with, died of COVID 19.
I haven't asked the details, but I was shocked as I was aware that the person passing was younger than I. I was somewhat surprised to learn that the person wasn't that much younger, 54 years of age, as I would have guessed it was a decade or so.
I didn't ask the details, but I know that the person was almost surely not vaccinated, and I know why. That makes this a death that surely could have been avoided.
At one time I wondered, along with people like Fr. Dwight Longnecker, if the Pandemic would cause a big reassessment of some things. I still wonder that, although I'm less hopeful about that than I had been. Some reassessment is going on, however, as the press has been reporting that the country is in the midst of the Great Resignation, an event reflecting people walking off from their jobs, post COVID lockdowns, and refusing to return to them. While people are worried about that, I'm hopeful, even though it's hoping against hope, that this reflects a reconsideration of the Industrial economy we've bought off on for so long, and maybe a bit of a wandering back to a Chestertonesque one.
Closer to home, I suppose, it's been a very odd year and perhaps one of turmoil. As I've noted elsewhere, I never did stay at home during the pandemic, but I was often the only one at work. As part of that, during part of that time frame my two college age kids were back home, confined to Zoom U. This past semester that has not been true, so my wife and I, who went from empty nesters to full housers went back to empty nesters. It was somewhat disorienting.
Also disorienting was watching the law evolve during the time period. Zoom came in and like the detective in Brecht's Maßnehmen Gegen Die Macht, it's grown fat and won't leave. Doing in person depositions now is almost a thing of the past, it seems, although some older lawyers, such as myself, are bucking the trend. Some younger ones basically don't leave their houses anymore. The legal world is in transition and, at age 58, I don't like that.
Something that I also don't really quite like is the realization that I'm past the point where there's any point in my pondering the judiciary, which I used to do. Oddly, I saw a comment from a figure associated with the judicial appointments expressing concern the other day about the lack of applicants. Part of that is that those like myself, of which there were quite a few, who had lots of experience in the civil law were basically not welcome as applicants, so we quit applying. In the meantime it seems that most younger lawyers have decided to eschew the courtroom. Indeed, I received comments from a lawyer I tried a case against about being baffled on being in the process as it just doesn't happen much. It still happens for me, however, and more than once last year. I'm feeling like Crazy Horse, in being an acknowledged anachronism, fighting on.
As that anachronism, this past year I've worked heavily and that keeps up. This Fall has been the worst hunting season, a season I highly value, since I was a law student. I just haven't been getting out, and keeping up at work is why, or so I believe.
This past year something that's been a shock to see is the friends of my children all getting married, which means that my children are of that age. Indeed, they both have fairly long term girlfriends/boyfriends at this point, all of which causes some angst for a parent. All I'm really concerned about, at the end of the day, is metaphysical final destinations, and I think it's easy to get diverted on that trip. Life offers a lot of stopping off points and compromises, some of which can be hard to get back on the train from.
In the meantime, however, that train and the changes to the scenery it brings roll on, and that can be a shock for those watching the passengers. 2022, just coming up, promises big changes here in the smaller nest.
Well, perhaps it's time to set all these things aside. We're a year past an insurrection, and there's some hope that we may be putting it behind us. We're well into a final cycle of vaccinations, and there's hope that the Pandemic may be starting to get behind us. And its clear we're rethinking a lot of things as a society.
All of that is something to be thankful for. And perhaps more pacific pastures are on the horizon, even if there are a lot of breaks to struggle through to get to them.
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