Leave off the old nonsense. Take a walk.

The Column: 11.04.22

I was right this morning and my wife was wrong. This happens so seldom and it brightens my whole day. She reads the Times, reads books, watches documentaries, and all I read is my own column so what I know is probably half wrong. She told me this morning to go to the doctor’s office and get a flu shot. I picked up the phone. She said, “You don’t have to call, just go in.” She insisted. I called and the nurse answered and said, “Can you come at 11:45?” It was 10 a.m. at the time. I was elated. I’m a cheerful guy but elation is rare for me.

So maybe I’m more right than I know. I put my money long-term on optimism, kindness, and humor as basic American values. I can see you shaking your heads but this is my column and I’ll have my say. I believe that the paranoid self-pitying delusionary narcissist is not in the American mainstream. We’ve been fascinated by D.J. the bronze matinee idol with the squiggles in his hair, the man who never told a joke or made fun of himself or petted a dog or put his arm around a friend who wasn’t bought and paid for.

He opened the door to a right-wing surge that’s likely to win on Tuesday, selling the theme that libs are out to destroy the country and brainwash your kids, requiring the use of force to correct the popular vote and stop the slide toward anarchy. This surge goes against the optimistic spirit of the Masons, Kiwanis, Rotary, the Lions, 4-H, Red Cross, volunteer fire departments, chambers of commerce, all of them purposeful and positive, dedicated to helping people they don’t know, all of them part of the backbone of rural America where the right-wing surge is strong

These folks are not comfortable with paranoid conspiracy theories. They’re not about to join the Coyote Committee and surround the Capitol.

But unintended consequences are all around us. Climate change has given us this gorgeous autumn that goes on and on. My beloved told me that I’ve been much more sociable and fun to be with since I got canceled in the #MeToo wave of a few years ago, which is good news. A guy is knocked off his bicycle and hereby becomes a better husband and is happier, which surely was not the MTers’ intention. An unintended benefit.

And when the liberal elite gets dehorsed this week, I predict they find happiness in defeat and the freedom to learn the art of cooking and hang with good people, meanwhile the victors who believe the Earth is flat and gravity is a hoax and secret societies are taking over the world by creating Caesar salad dressing that causes seizures will find that giving speeches to a chamber that’s empty except for some clerks and a bunch of grade school kids up in the balcony is not satisfying and then, in secret session, the facts will be laid out for them and they’ll face an enormous problem: anger and resentment are not useful in making the trains run on time and the mail get delivered and the hospitals care for the sick and distressed. Government includes a great deal of accounting, in which resentment is irrelevant. And it’s awkward to curse the people in power when you’re one of them.

Meanwhile, the liberal elite can enjoy long walks. Emerson said, “Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

They can sit and read the classics and learn why they’ve lasted so long. Emerson, for example, is our great optimist. He said, “You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This day is too dear to waste a moment on the rotten yesterdays. Write it on your heart that this time is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.” Congratulate the victors and resume life. Tomorrow is a new day and we must not waste a moment of it, and the long walks and the chance encounters with people may teach you things you can’t pick up in the gilded halls of power. And make you happier too.

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