The Hatfield & McCoy Picnic

Aug 14, 2022

∙ Paid

Author’s Note:

I wrote this piece almost a year ago, long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Also, at the time of writing, the Delta surge had just yanked the world back into a grim reality with seemingly no end in sight, and the January 6th insurrection was still too fresh to process properly. The danger of writing political and social commentary is that circumstances can change before the ink dries and if not published promptly you sound like an out-of-date idiot.

By committing the heretofore unthinkable act of launching another major ground war in Europe I assumed that Vlad the Impaler had rendered the essay moot. That he had miraculously succeeded in uniting America once again in defiance of a common and reviled enemy. And it also seemed as though surely the House Select Committee in presenting damning and convincing evidence of criminality had forced us to accept a common set of facts, that our democracy had been imperiled by an amoral authoritarian leader, and that we would rally behind the flag and Constitution and return to being the United States of America.

Of course, except for the brief period of national unity that produced a couple of bi-partisan bills sending weapons to Ukraine which were cheered on both sides of the aisle for humanitarian reasons and the enrichment of arms manufacturers, and the fact that a handful of independent voters changed their minds about Donald Trump because they accidentally stumbled onto the televised hearings when they were looking for Wheel of Fortune, nothing has really changed or happened to bring us any closer together. So, I present the essay as written without amendment or apology.