Days of Remembrance

Life comes at you fast.

And it seems like the older you get, the faster it comes.   Days blend together in a hodgepodge of relative sameness.  You might be able to remember what you ate for lunch yesterday, but you would be hard-pressed to remember what you had on January 21, 2019 (unless you eat the same thing for lunch every day).

But we all have days that stand out, sometimes for good memories, sometimes for tragedy.

Many of those days are personal to us as individuals, as family members, as parts of churches, communities, workplaces, or other groups we participate in.

But some days of remembrance are more universally shared, ones that live in the memory of most of a nation or planet.

In my time there have been the assassinations of the 60s (JFK, RFK, MLK), landing on the moon, the Watergate's Saturday Night Massacre, Nixon's resignation, the Challenger explosion, Columbine, 9/11, the first day of the Iraq War, the electoral college victory of a narcissistic white supremacist to the highest office in the land.

Celebrity passings sometimes hit us very hard.  Micheal Jackson, Elvis, Princess Daina, Prince, Robin Williams, just to name a few that impacted a good number of people.

Mass shootings galvanize us for a while and then fade all too quickly.  Why?  They are all too frequent now.

Notre Dame's fire was shocking and temporarily galvanizing, but I don't think it is a day that will stick very high in our memory list or for very long.  It did not entirely burn down, and the very wealthy have swooped in with tons of money to restore it.  Flint should be so lucky.

I believe today will be a day of remembrance.  I believe it will be a day of turning points with attitudes towards Trump and the investigations that have been launched concerning him. It will be a day when either the Trumpeteers wake up, or they hunker down at the cost of our American Republic.  Either the manipulations of Barr and Captain Bone Spurs succeed, lustily assisted by the Goebbels like propaganda machine they have assembled (including but not limited to Fox News), or they wake up, catch the glimmers of truth  beyond the smoke and mirrors, beyond the lies and puffery, and start to save American History.

I remain, as always, a short term pessimist and a long-term optimist.  I don't expect miracles today, but I do pray the turn around starts.  I shudder in fear as to what will happen to the great American experiment if it doesn't.