My Friends, Let Us March into March

latimes.com

Life is good, spring is on the way, and we must keep reminding ourselves of this since it isn’t reported in the newspapers, just as they don’t bother to point out that Canada is to the north and a brisk walk is good for you and you shouldn’t stick a fork into the toaster to pry loose a slice that’s stuck. You’re supposed to know this.

Yes, there is sadness and confusion. Yes, a person can descend into the insanity of passwords and PIN numbers that makes you want to go back to the paper tablet and No. 2 pencil. Yes, there is the misery of instruction manuals written by technical whizzes for other whizzes but for the rest of us may as well be in Urdu.

We are a divided people and some of us believe that left-wing optometrists use eye drops to make their patients susceptible to mind control by the CIA, the AFL-CIO, and the liberal elite of UCLA, and others of us think this is horse hockey, but the nation is united in our hatred of instruction manuals.

Last week my laptop froze after I had written a couple thousand words in a document unsaved and I was on the verge of despair. But I have a guru out in the woods of Wisconsin whom I called and he guided me through the steps of recovery, a joyful experience. I went back to work, a happy man.

I must admit, though, that when the president gave the SOTU and proclaimed that in just one year he had brought a nation in crisis back bigger, better, richer, and stronger, achieving a transformation like no one has ever seen before, to be the most incredible and exceptional nation ever to exist on the face of this earth, it didn’t thrill me the way it should’ve. I’ve gotten more pleasure from a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder, to tell you the truth.

When I was a kid in Benson School, we memorized the Gettysburg Address in sixth grade and it’s still in my head I discovered the other night, lying in bed, from “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth” and it came along, with some hesitation around the “increased devotion” and “the last full measure of devotion” to “of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” The man had an ear for cadence, that’s for sure.

I doubt that schoolchildren are going to be memorizing, “Today, our border is secure, our spirit is restored, inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before, our enemies are scared, our military and police are stacked, and America is respected again — perhaps like never before.” Not even in Texas or Wyoming or South Carolina. The words don’t settle decisively in the mind.

Our guy’s transformation of America to be bigger, better, richer, stronger is sales talk, just like his speech at the U.N. last fall, saying, “We are the hottest country anywhere in the world and there is no other country even close.” Who ever referred to their country as hot? Stocks may be hot, a pop song, an actor, a vacation resort, bitcoins but not a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Make America Hot Again? Where are we going with this?

The SOTU viewership was low, mostly barrooms, nursing homes, shopping centers, airport terminals, where TVs are kept on round the clock for atmosphere, but if this is transformation, why does a solid majority disapprove? And when he proposes that we “nationalize” the midterm elections, is he thinking of a similar transformation?

My grandpa Keillor emigrated from New Brunswick to Minnesota in 1900 and it’s tempting to think of going back. There are places in northern Minnesota where the border is just two strands of barbed wire. Lift one strand, step on the other, and in you go. Their national anthem is rather operatic for me, they have five political parties, the bacon is round and not in strips, but a person could get used to it. They have spacious skies, majestic mountains, fruited plains, just as we do. So they’re not hot; I can deal with it. The goodness of life is in the everyday. If the woman I love decides to go forth to the North, I’m with her.

Garrison Keillor © 03.02.26