In a few days a casino magnate and Reality TV Show celebrity will be inaugurated as President of the United States.  The Republican Party with its new majority in both houses of congress cannot wait to destroy the health care insurance of millions by repealing Obamacare.  Never mind that they have nothing to put in it’s place.  Certainly a sea change has occurred.  Journalists with years of experience observing our government have no idea what all of this will mean.

The working class using social media (Facebook) stormed the Bastille.  Who would have thought.  The status quo is upended.  Enter Robespierre?

The parallels with conditions in France in the 1780s are striking: a. Financial crisis due to increasing costs of government and the costs of war.  b. Failure of reform as the nobles largely exempted themselves from taxes throwing the burden on the middle classes and upon the more prosperous of the peasants.  c. Social inequality.

So the Ancien Regime fell.   With us, the form of governance customary since our founding is in jeopardy.   With us, it’s Voltaire in reverse; a shift from a liberal, inclusive, more fair society to a trajectory of authoritarian rule.  What awaits?

I find the poems of Wendell Berry a source of solace.  What is more comforting than a wider perspective?  I offer this fragment of a poem taken from Given Poems, Sabbaths 1998,

VI

Every year is costly,
As you know well, Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

The gift is balanced by
Its total loss, and yet,
And yet the light breaks in,
Heaven seizing its moments
That are at once its own
And yours.