It has tormented us for months. Separated us from friends and relatives. Caused anxiety and exacerbated our culture wars. Focused national attention like nothing else in decades.
And, no. Not the pandemic.
The 2020 election.
Only 10 days lie between us and curtains for one of our two unhealthy national preoccupations. May they speed by.
The pandemic is the more immediately pressing problem, for it kills – hundreds of thousands and counting. When not killing, it may still ruin health. Steal livelihoods. Put people out of homes. Separate loved ones. Interrupt schooling.
Even for those still relatively untouched, the coronavirus has flattened existence into a duller, more drearily repetitive, less sensory pattern without sociability and entertainment, diversion or escape.
Yet the pandemic will pass. Science will master it, and a vaccine will vanquish it.
Our broken political culture is the harder challenge, because fixing it will require trust, the abandonment of selfishness and a commitment to fair play not evident among antagonists of any partisan hue. Our talent for demonizing interferes.
But Nov. 3 is a start. Let’s get ’er done.
More on civility
‘Division in the American house’
Can’t we be nice to each other?
Jeff
Well done buddy. It is good to ready such an even handed description of our situation. You are “doing good” to write it and To put it out there for the community to see.
Phil
Thank you, Phil.