by Michael Carin

What a tremendous pity it is that we are living through a time when our thoughts on the world situation inevitably revolve around a small man in a big office.

At such a time, it serves us well to reflect that countries can experience crisis in much the same way as individuals – and overcome it in much the same manner. Imagine an individual struck down by cancer.

He enters hospital for invasive surgery. He undergoes prolonged, grueling treatment. In time, he rises up from the trial. He regains full health and enjoys complete remission.

Two years ago the United States contracted a case of political malignancy. The disease came in the form of a wannabe Mussolini who won the Oval Office. The aspiring autocrat instantly began spreading toxins throughout the institutions of The republic to the south will soon enjoy remission American government and culture.

The last 24 months have brought into question the resilience of constitutional order in the world’s foremost homeland of democracy. Would the rule of law endure the onslaught? We need not have worried so much. The election last month of a House of Representatives that will be controlled by the Democrats signifies that the American immune system is alive and functioning.

It tells us that treatment has begun for the cancer that had invaded the American body politic. The unseating of numerous Republican sycophants indicates that remission from the shame is on the horizon. America will not cease being America because of the corruption of a man whose malfeasance is outdone only by his uncouthness.

The country that produced Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, two Roosevelts and over three hundred Nobel Prize winners will not be permanently injured by a president who will be best remembered for his mendacity.

We can expect consolation from the waves of cleansing ink that will wash over the republic once the current occupant of the White House leaves office.

Imagine the hundreds of books that will be written about the brief passage in American history that began in November 2016.

Some of their titles are not difficult to predict. Travesty in Washington will certainly be one, and Four Years of Farce on the Potomac perhaps another. These are titles that will be among the more bland. A harsher critic will opt for Buffoonery and Vanity: The Presidency of a New York Con-Man. An even less charitable author, one who traces all of the president’s ties to his puppet-masters in Moscow, may go with a book simply but devastatingly entitled Benedict Donald. Only to say: we should be optimistic about the end game. The future will expunge the mess of the present.

The momentum of the American idea, though it can be stalled, cannot be stopped. Decades hence the Trump administration will be nothing more than a sad, embarrassing footnote, and the name of the man who headed it will very likely act as a synonym for Quisling.

Michael Carin’s novel Churchill at Munich is available at The Senior Times office for $9.95. Call 514-484-5033 to reserve a copy.