RIDING THE RAFT DOWN THE NIAGARA RIVER

My friend Lucian K. Truscott IV wrote in his end-of-year post at his Substack blog:

“As we enter 2022, we face an implacable foe in a Republican Party bent on stealing what it cannot earn. Right-wingers are happy to reignite battles we thought we had won over bigotry and misogyny. They know what’s at stake. What matters most to us must be what matters most to them: winning. What kind of country we will be, and the way that we live our lives and our children will live theirs, depends on our votes and our dedication to the rule of law. Nothing else matters.”

Indeed: Nothing. Else. Matters.

Right now, things feel as if we are passengers on a raft floating down the Niagara River - that roaring sound that’s growing louder is Niagara Falls ahead.

When noted presidential historian Michael Beschloss and experienced campaigner David Plouffe both say on the same night on different shows that the chances of our remaining a democratic constitutional republic in 2025 is a “coin flip,” things are difficult.

Another friend, writing his year-end post, made an important observation: “If 2021 is to be remembered for anything, it is a year in which complexity took over from the straightforward.”

Indeed, 2022 is a portentous year.

When it comes to what to do, I am reminded of a question I put to my late friend Dick Best, the man who changed the Battle of Midway from an American defeat to a victory. I asked how he and the guys he was with kept going between Pearl Harbor and Midway, as awful news got piled on top of terrible news. His answer: "We put our heads down and got on with the job at hand that moment. The alternative was unthinkable."

We shouldn’t do less.

We have indeed been in times as perilous as these before.

On Christmas Eve 1776, there were 5,000 ragged soldiers hiding in the forests of eastern Pennsylvania. Most of them were looking forward to the end of their enlistments on New Year’s Day, and more than a few were cursing themselves for not deserting as their comrades had over the past two months as defeat compounded defeat.

And yet they found it within themselves to go over the hill and climb into the boats and cross the river and hide in the snowy forest where they listened to their opponents sing drunken Christmas carols.

And in the dawn they took Trenton Barracks and saved the Revolution.

I for one will be reading the text that inspired them to do that, written the day before at the request of General Washington by Tom Paine. You might do the same tonight:

Read the whole thing, not just the opening paragraph.

https://www.ushistory.org/paine/crisis/c-01.htm

Happy New Year to all of you.