August 27, 2018

Gentle Face Book exchange with Angie and Terry and some of my high school friends about Trump. Nobly, I neither fought nor lectured, but assured them I had noted their perspectives and hoped it would be well for all of us one day. But it is hard confronting a stand that is all assertion and no fact without saying so. Angie says it’s a shame that Trump hasn’t been left alone to do the important work of the people, that he has been thwarted at every turn. I want to point out that the Presidential decrees–things he can do and did do without input from everybody–have been uniformly disastrous. Would he suddenly veer to virtue of the whole world did his bidding? Terry says “somebody” must lead America in the “right direction,” and I want to ask “what is the right direction,” but I am afraid of what I may hear. You want to be gentle. . . you want to be reasonable. . . especially with old folks set in their ways. I remember when Angie was a doe, arguably the prettiest girl in the class. Yeats wrote about this all the time. . . “an intellectual hatred is the worst/so let her think all opinion is accursed.”

Evening spent listening to shape note singing and working on Jason.