Writing about the near future is hard. I'm at the keyboard on 25 October. I of course have no foreknowledge of who will win the Presidential election. Indeed, auto-posting at 12:30 am perhaps nobody yet knows. But here's a rare promise that in an election season will be kept, I won't go back and edit.
My default setting is optimism. I have faith in the people and institutions of our country. The leaders of various political factions....ah, not so much. We'll be OK, but a look ahead suggests there will be a rough patch.
The best case scenario is that somebody wins with enough margin that this mess does not swirl into, and taint, the judicial system. But perhaps if we are really going for ideal, not by so big a margin that it is considered a Mandate to just go do any damned thing. We have two badly flawed men running. One of them will be President. He's not going to have an easy nor a pleasant time of it.
I've been around for what my UK friends call "Donkey Years". My memories of politics stretch back so far they lightly touch upon the Kennedy era. I can't recall any election that has featured such a bleak tone, although Reagan versus Carter came close. This "Dark Winter" that is foretold....not something I am excited about after a half a year of semi-lockdown and moderate disruption of my life. (With of course due sympathy and respect to those who have suffered more, and there are many such).
The undertone of course is caused by Covid-19. Absent that we'd presumably be looking at an ongoing strong economy, at least nominal peace in assorted foreign trouble spots and a much needed re-assessment on the part of both political parties. Instead we stay huddled in our bunkers, wearing DIY biohazard masks, wondering if a slightly scratchy throat is something ominous not only for ourselves but for an extended group of people we care about. It's horrid. But one advantage to being a grizzled veteran is perspective. The world is always about to End.
1957 - I'm born. The "Asian Flu" kills 1-2 million world wide.* By comparison Covid-19 has killed roughly 1.15 million world wide. And counting. But also in a population that is almost three times larger and considerably older than 1957.
1962 - My parents having packed me off to kindergarten at age 4, I'm now in First Grade at Lowell Elementary school. I remember civil defense drills in the school basement concurrent with the Cuban missile crisis where we came fairly close to nuclear Armageddon.
1963 - I remember - oddly it was in the same school basement - lining up for one of the first doses of oral polio vaccine. It was pink and tasted good. It came in a little white paper cup. For a parent/grandparent polio is scarier than Covid. It hit young children and potentially crippled them for life. Covid usually only makes them mildly ill. It's worse for us grown ups of course, but given a choice we'd all prefer that we be the ones at risk.
1968 - I'm 11 years old. There was enough weird stuff going on in a mixed up world, and plenty in a mixed up family, that I have no memory of the "Hong Kong Flu" that killed 1-4 million world wide.
1976 - I'm in college. There was great alarm regards a revival of the 1918 "Spanish Influenza". A crash program to find a vaccine was undertaken and must be considered a success. But for reasons inscrutable the "Swine Flu" never took off. And Gerald Ford, perhaps our last truly admirable President, was pilloried for getting us worked up over nothing. And for the possible side effects of the vaccine. I got the vaccine in the Student Commons. I did fine.
1981 - First reports of AIDS. I was in Med school but by that point mostly on clinical rotations. So it was not until Residency a year or two later when anything like a clear picture started to emerge from the bewildering wave of odd infections and cancers that had been puzzling my instructors. Death toll world wide: 25 million and counting.
And so it goes. Our leaders and many of those they would presume to lead are not as resolute as we were a generation or two back.... and never you mind comparing them with further back still. My great grandparents had a whole batch of kids. Only two survived a diptheria epidemic in the late 1800s. They sent those two off to live with relatives while the others died one after another at home. That's how things were.
And this morning, hopefully with some clarity, we have put the 2020 election campaign with its diseased undertones behind us. We have a new reality. And that's how things are.**
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* I'm calling things by their historic names. I'm more concerned about the editing of history than I am about offending random geographic areas.
** I'll say in advance that I accept the results of the election. You should too, whatever the outcome. If you are among those unhappy with how things turned out, get back to work electing better people next time around. But could you, please, just take a break for a couple of months? I don't want the 2024 election campaign to begin until - Lord help us all - sometime in 2021.
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With much searching about I found a picture of Lowell Elementary school in 1963. It nudged other memories that I'll bore you with some day...
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