“May you live in interesting times,” goes the expression, used by Robert F. Kennedy and attributed to the Chinese. It is used with irony, meaning that our normal times of peace and harmony are not as interesting. And, because we find ourselves in one of those interesting periods of our history, we understand fully the intent of the expression. Instead of peace and understanding, we are facing disorder and conflict of the kind we had not seen in decades. The Vietnam war was tragic, but it seemed that our government could solve that conflict just by walking away, as indeed it did. And Nixon’s impeachment, while ominous, was finally carried out in a bipartisan way.
But now, there are signs that this president will not go away unless he is carried forcefully out of the White House by the Secret Service. There is a legitimate fear, because of his declarations, that we will have a civil war if he is impeached. Many tyrants throughout history have caused untold suffering before being forced from office, and we are looking at one of them at this moment. There is no place to hide from the daily onslaught of confusing actions by our government, of contradictory messages on foreign and domestic policy, of suffering by immigrants, of discredited professionals who allowed themselves to think they had the best jobs of their lives, only to see their careers come to a sudden end. We have lived through months of turmoil with our present government, with an arrogant executive determined to undermine our institutions, shaping the courts in his image, ignoring the information of our intelligence agencies, degrading the role of Congress, and attacking the press as unworthy of trust, as purveyors of “fake news.” And here we are now, witnessing a war of words between the executive and Congress, in a divided country. We had never seen a White House fully dedicated to man the barricades. When a few Republicans dared to break away from Trump they gave us a ray of hope that the end could be near for one of the worst periods in our history. Perhaps the GOP leadership will come out from the tall grass, finally acknowledging that their man has poisoned our society.
It came as no surprise to read that Trump had seriously considered a moat at the border, full of snakes and alligators. According to the most recent revelations in the New York Times, Trump appeared to have suggested shooting the immigrants in the legs to slow them down. And we saw the man in charge of defending our justice system, Attorney General Willam Barr, joining Rudy Giuliani, traveling around the world to serve Trump’s nefarious purposes, trading America’s prestige and good will for dirt. So, these interesting times may come to an end, because we have always been able to count on men and women of good will to serve for the good of the nation and not their selfish interests. May they prevail.
Editorial
Noticias Newswire
