“Poor Elijah’s Almanack” is written by Peter Berger of Mount Holly, who taught English and history for 30 years.
My dictionary defines “regret” as “to think of with a deep sense of loss.” Its origin traced down through the family of European languages means “to look back with weeping,” a translation that better conveys the anguish, sorrow and guilt that tighten my throat and streak my face when I dare to look my regret in the eye.
I enrolled in my first education class in 1970, just as public education was careening off the rails into a lost decade and a resulting “rising tide of mediocrity.” I wish I could say I saw through all the nonsense in 1970, but I didn’t. The stupidities I advocated and the glib ignorance and scorn I displayed still pain me.
I remember especially the contests between my clever-sounding, wrongheaded defense of bad education ideas and one particular classmate’s more orthodox views, opinions that closely resemble my own today. I can’t remember her face, but in my recollection her parted hair is light brown, and I can see the top of her head but not her tears as she stares down at a closed book in her lap.
Half a century later, if I could find her, I would earnestly beg her pardon. I know my throat would tighten as I spoke because it’s tightening now as I write, and remember, and regret.
Emotional pain can be excruciating, but regrets can also leave tangible consequences and destruction in their wake. France suffered more than emotional pain in 1793. The French lost their king, and their king lost his head, as did many innocent French men and women. The Reign of Terror, like many of history’s dark nights, spawned regret in countless hearts.
France was not immune to the tangible consequences of fanaticism, folly and excess. Neither are we.
Present-day American politics has become poisoned by incompetence and mindless partisanship. In these troubled times, the disease is most often carried by Republicans.
Congressman Gaetz, for instance, dismisses abortion rights as the obsession of women who are “odious from the inside out,” “look like a thumb,” and therefore have the “least likelihood of getting pregnant.”
Carl Paladino, 2022 Republican candidate for Congress, identified Hitler as “the kind of leader we need today.” Paladino lost, but not before calling the Fuhrer “inspirational” and marveling that he could “hypnotize” crowds by “screaming” antisemitic “epithets.”
Displaying a breathtaking ignorance of religious freedom, the First Amendment, and American history in general, Rep. Boebert continues to insist that “the church is supposed to direct the government.” She’s “tired of this separation of church and state junk.”
Rep. Greene shares Boebert’s enthusiasm for Christian nationalism. Greene wants the Republican Party to “conform to Christianity.” She blamed California’s wildfires on Jewish space lasers controlled by the Rothschild family. She posed with an assault rifle beside photos of prominent Democrats and captioned her post, “We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists.” She also claimed that if she’d organized the Jan. 6 assault on Congress, the insurrectionists would have had more guns, and “we would’ve won.”
Is she lying when she takes her oath to “support and defend the Constitution”? Or is she simply being cute about sedition?
Conventional Republicans assure us that extremists like Greene are a slim minority of their party. If so, the majority needs to speak up and prove it.
In the meantime, Greene acknowledges she’s open to running for vice president or president “down the road” and is reportedly on Donald Trump’s 2024 vice presidential shortlist.
As for Trump, he has repeatedly promised, if reelected, to look “very, very seriously” into pardons for anyone convicted of insurrection-related crimes. At a recent New Hampshire event, he embraced a woman who served time in prison for her part in the insurrection. He autographed the backpack she’d carried at the Capitol on Jan. 6, called her “terrific,” referred to “J6ers” as patriots, and assured her she’d “wind up being happy” even though she’d been “through too much.”
The following day she demanded the execution of Mike Pence and “every single” member of Congress who voted to certify Joe Biden’s election. She also proclaimed Donald Trump the “real president.”
Donald Trump has been claiming the 2020 election was “false and fraudulent” since before the election even happened.
No audit or lawsuit has found any widespread, systematic fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
Last week yet another investigation commissioned by the Trump campaign found no evidence of 2020 election fraud and no validity to any fraud claims presented by Trump.
To overturn the 2020 election, and ensure a Trump victory, Trump called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Those are Trump’s own words.
Like many Republican officeholders and party officials, Rep. Joyce, chairman of the Republican Governance Group, refused to condemn Trump for threatening to terminate the Constitution. He was then pressed about his silence and how he could possibly still vote for Trump, a man willing to sacrifice the Constitution so he can cling unlawfully to power.
Chairman Joyce replied, “Well, he says a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean that it’s ever going to happen.”
Many of us put our trust in that same dubious assurance.
We’re the United States.
It can’t happen here.
Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is a play about ambition and regret. Three witches promise Macbeth he’ll be king, and Macbeth and his wife destroy themselves making that prophecy come true. The witches then promise Macbeth he can’t be defeated until the forest of Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane, Macbeth’s castle at the summit of Dunsinane Hill.
Macbeth feels reassured. Since he knows it’s impossible for a forest to move, he considers his defeat impossible, too. He doesn’t imagine his enemies will cut down the trees and carry them as shields until he sees the forest marching toward him.
We are raised to believe our republic is immortal. Both Washington and Mr. Lincoln knew that wasn’t true. They knew we could destroy ourselves.
We, however, prefer to believe that other people’s righteousness can cover over a multitude of our sins.
We prefer to believe in forests that don’t move, and regrets that cost us nothing.
Can a government of Boeberts, Greenes and Trumps, of conspirators, cowards, and armed insurrectionists long endure?
Will you be able to look your regret in the eye?
Will you look back with weeping after it’s too late?
