By the time I finish this sentence, some new awful event will have made the Jerusalem incident pale beside it, the way the Puerto Rico deaths, the Russian investigation, the taxes, and, despite Harvey Weinstein and company, the abused women terrorized by Trump, have paled before each new, dreadful Trumposity.
The bully is still bullying--and none stand up to him. I think of King Frank, the first to lead Narnia in the series' inaugural book, The Magician's Nephew. King Frank thinks he's not cut out to be king, the very characteristic that Aslan, the book's Jesus figure, knows qualifies Frank for true leadership. King Frank is a boy from the countryside, he says, used to farm work, and his accent is cockney. Queen Helen, his wife, arrives covered with soapsuds, since she'd been doing the wash when Aslan transported her to Narnia, and both feel humbled by the attention from Aslan, by his confidence in them, and by the loveliness of the Narnian landscape. Love, above all, defines King Frank and Queen Helen, along with that very British desire to do the right thing.
I feel I shouldn't put the two of them in the same sentence as Donald Trump, but they are such an ideal, the likes of which American politics rarely sees--Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Barack Obama may be the only two presidents approaching that ideal. How we slid from Obama to Trump is Vladimir Putin's best kept secret. But his doped-up athletes have been exposed, and wouldn't it be nice if he and Don got simultaneously deposed.
To be governed by leaders who give a damn about the people and the planet would be the best for which one could hope in 2018. Like the German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose "Be Deutsch" went viral, we must, in the face of Trump's divide-and-conquer strategy, all "hold together--try to be nice."
My new year's resolution is to do just that, even when I'm introducing ideas to my family or other groups that might not be their favorite. Hold together, try to be nice.
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