These are the Best of Times. These are the Worst of Times.

Why we seem to feel that this is "the end of days."

We view these as desperate times.  Democracy, we feel, has been downed by partisan winds, like an old tree whose roots are being torn from a ground that is no longer nourishing or supportive.

Both sides of the hall speak as if this is the day of judgment and we have been found wanting. 

Before we lie down with the goats and watch the sheep graze off into a promised land, it will prove useful to take stock of the true nature of our times in comparison with the past.  I don’t mean to neglect the dangers of the present, but I wonder if we should be so certain that these are “the end days.” 

I suggest a possible reason for our pessimism. Our schools have taught a glamourize version of American history, as we attempted to prepare the sons and daughters of immigrants for factory work and instill patriotism to their new country.  Nuanced telling of history risked getting off that track.  So we naturally judge the reality of today as a serious deviation from all that has gone before.

Yet today is not unlike the past: violent, partisan, embracing ideologies and intolerance, with intense conflict over rights and interests and identify. 

We do not understand that our worth as a nation, and it has been an achievement, has always been to surmounted these challenges, even at great cost of lives and without a clear victory for everyone’s version of the “right.” 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”  (Charles Dickens, opening lines of the Tale of Two Cities)

I believe that the year 2021 is a great time to be alive, as were so many others in our past. And we shall see by the morning light that our flag still waves over this, our land.