Unitarians: Thinking it Over

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I grew up in the Fifties, during the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, a man admired by my father and uncles, a Kansan, a victorious general, and it’s hard to imagine Eisenhower holding up funding for a crucial rail tunnel under the Hudson unless Penn Station be renamed for him. Or sending his son-in-law on diplomatic missions to Middle East sovereignties in which he is deeply invested. Or masked men in military gear conducting dragnets in American cities, rounding up whomever they wish without warrants. This is a considerable change from then until now and it’s not about electronics. It’s about e-t-h-i-c-s.

But the Current Guy says, “Nobody cares about that.” So one can imagine him deciding the November elections are unreliable and postponing them until 2028 or sometime when his party can be certain of the outcome. Look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that he won’t and see if you believe it.

Meanwhile a judge has stuck his finger in the dike and held off Trump Station on 34th Street in Manhattan, at least until a higher court lets indifference be its guide and allows monarchial narcissism to have its way, maybe allowing the state to become Trumpsylvania and the city be Donaldelphia. What’s the problem?

I would just note that Fiorello LaGuardia became an airport because he was a genuine hero, a Republican-Fusion independent elected to three straight terms as mayor, beating out the ward bosses of Tammany Hall, a beloved short rotund guy in a rumpled suit and black Stetson, who set about clearing out slums and building public housing. He became a successful Broadway musical, “Fiorello!” And he was instrumental in expanding the old airport, known as New York Municipal, to accommodate big jets.

Grand Central Station is known as such because it is rather magnificent and stands in Midtown Manhattan. If it were renamed Melania, most New Yorkers would stick with the old name.

What we know as JFK was popularly known as Idlewild but one month after President Kennedy was assassinated, it was named for him and that name stuck. The Kennedy Center is still that; nobody calls it anything else except people who are paid to.

But the Current Guy is bold and knows no bounds. W.B. Yeats described him perfectly:

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

In one year he has replaced Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion with Disinformation, Executive Egotism, and Invincible Ignorance.

Were Lincoln standing with us today
He would look around with dismay
At the mad King Lear
Ruling down here,
But in Washington, not in a play.

When some of our Olympic skiers said they were troubled by the ICE maneuvers and other political tides, the Current Guy suggested they move to another country. He’s the one in the wrong country: he should try North Korea.

Yeats’s words from 1919 seem even truer today:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Our indifference is due to the fact that life is pretty good. You can order stuff online and it’ll come the next day. Your little smartphone contains Bad Bunny and also Brahms’ Second Symphony in D Major, take your pick. We have boutique beer now, which combines “floral notes of marigolds sprinkled with saffron playing off earthy vanilla with rustic bitterness in the finish.” We never had that in beer before, just cold beer.

Yes, there are too many passwords and PIN numbers. But you walk into a men’s room and pee in a urinal and step back and it automatically flushes. You feel like a prince. You drive and a woman you’re not married to tells you when to turn right or go straight and if you don’t, there is no recrimination, she just recalculates the route.

I believe in cheerfulness. There are bastards in the world: don’t let them get you down. That is how cruelty and ignorance work, by discouraging the rest of us. There is evil in the world, outright evil, not mere political disagreement, but craven cruel corrupt evil, and thanks to this many of my Unitarian friends are rethinking their longstanding disbelief in eternal damnation and imagining men with blank gazes baking on hot sulfurous coals. Progress is being made.

Garrison Keillor © 02.09.26