My mind keeps coming back to Yeats’ 1919 poem, “The Second Coming.” He wrote it shortly after World War I, knowing that nothing had really been resolved. In retrospect, we know the answer to his question, “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?”

We also know the answer to that question today in America. We see again that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” There’s plenty of noise opposing Trump, yet too little broad-based opposition. Congress is, with a handful of exceptions, divided between the Minion Party and the Coward Party. Outrage should be building to the point of besieging the White House, but as far as I can tell, it’s declining. People’s idea of opposing Trump is to put “#Resist” into a social media hashtag.

I’ve been going to protests. At one in Dover, NH, Maura Sullivan, a declared Democratic (Coward Party) candidate for the House of Representatives from my district, came to talk to people. This was specifically a pro-impeachment protest. I asked her if she supported the articles of impeachment that were before the House. She said she hadn’t read them and couldn’t comment on them. Couldn’t she do basic homework before attending an event on the subject? As far as I can tell, she still hasn’t taken a position. I think the Coward Party’s strategy is to let the Minion Party ruin America and then say, “You’d better vote for us, we can’t be as bad as them.” They may be just a rubber stamp for the president in a couple of years, but they’ll have nice offices and salaries.

The extreme left is working to make opposition to Trump look like a fringe position. Socialists make themselves visible at protests. Some people are wearing “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” T-shirts, which sounds like a call to murder anyone they label a “Nazi.”

These words in the late David Boaz’s The Libertarian Mind sound quaint today:

We sometimes forget just how libertarian the American political culture is; consider, for instance, the possibility that a newspaper deemed ‘blasphemous’ or offensive to some group would be shut down. Any such suggestion in the United States would be stopped point-blank with the comment ‘That violates the First Amendment,’ and almost everyone — liberal, conservative, or libertarian — would agree.

Trump has initiated legal actions, by lawsuit and the use of government agencies, to intimidate multiple news sources. His popularity in the polls remains in the 40 to 50 percent range, no worse than Biden’s. The First Amendment has become optional for many people.

The center is not holding. Saying it’s hopeless is a self-fulfilling prediction, but I find it increasingly hard to find hope.