Hang On To Your Hat

I have just finished reading, for the third or fourth time already, the collection “E.B. White On Democracy,” published by HarperCollins in 2019 and edited by White’s granddaughter, Martha White, who also performed the same chore for “The Letters of E.B. White,” another of my favorite collections.

“On Democracy” includes an introduction by the ubiquitous Jon Meacham; these days you can’t swing a cat without hitting something Meacham has written, either a book, an introduction or a Biden speech. He’s his generation’s David McCullough.

His introduction you can easily skip; if you’re looking for an introduction to White, try either what his step-son, Roger Angell, wrote for a recent edition of “Strunk & White,” or what John Updike wrote for the most-recent edition of the “Letters.”

White is my go-to guy, either for getting my writing or my thinking back on track. Though not a preacher, professor or philosopher, he was highly proficient with the English language, a proficiency with the written word that produced essays and editorials (“comments”) for The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine for over a half a century, saying in his simple yet eloquent way what needed to be said when it most needed saying.

“As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate,” White wrote in 1973 in reply to a letter from a Mr. Nadeau. “Hope is the thing that is left to us, in a bad time.”

I’m from Indiana and “represented” by Mike Braun, so I know the embarrassment reasonable Kentuckians must feel about [Rand] Paul.

It’s hard these days to have hope. This past week I listened to part of an interview with the irascible Rand Paul, he with the poor imitation Jerry Lee Lewis hairdo and the profoundly vacuous mind. Paul’s being a member of the U.S. Senate does a huge disservice to the good people of Kentucky as it perpetuates the unfair assumption that all Kentuckians are likewise moronic.

I’m from Indiana and “represented” by Mike Braun, so I know the embarrassment reasonable Kentuckians must feel about Paul.

In my state the Legislature is working hard to do harm, to give we Hoosiers a future that’ll be worse not better — trying to make it easier to get guns and cancer yet harder to learn the truth — in an appalling display of collective boneheadedness.

Indiana is not alone; in states across the country (in which Republicans have likewise gerrymandered legislative districts to gain nearly absolute control) there can be found similar efforts to legitimate various levels of legislative foolishness.?

I read about all this with great consternation, deeply puzzled about where it’s coming from — only to realize it’s been with us all along, that there has always been that segment of the population grinding its gears to get at the legislative controls if for no other reason than to throw a wrench into the system to wreck it.

“Hang on to your hat,” White advised Nadeau at a similar time. “Hang on to your hope.”

The scene is not desolate. This bad time won’t last. Once again, through the efforts of upright men and compassionate women, this most-recent deceit against democracy will eventually be turned away, its perpetuators to become merely footnotes.?