Sanity in a Time of Insanity

In a time when sanity seems in short supply, I would like to recommend a resource which has provided me with some clarity and some hope amid Trump's gaslighting and bluster. It is the (free) daily newsletter of Harvard historian Heather Cox Richardson. Her work is deeply researched, interpretively canny, and she is able to bring some light into a time of obfuscation. I can't recommend it highly enough.

    The times have been so confusing on both sides of the Pond that one might say that I have been shocked into silence. Sometimes I feel that I have escaped the worst of things by living in England, but sometimes also I feel guilty for not being on the other side of the water trying to help out. Things in the UK are in upheaval too, though we face incompetence of a different kind. I don't understand—or perhaps I understand all too well—British politics; I only know that the government isn't working to manage the pandemic properly, and that we are having a catastrophic rise in cases.

    What is happening in America, however, seems to be politics as a blunt instrument. As Richardson has pointed out, Trump has done many things each of which would have sunk previous presidents, but no one is willing to call him out. One can only hope he loses the election so he can go to jail for the rest of his life.

    With that hope, and hope in God, I will sign off. As the Queen said at the beginning of the pandemic, Never give up; never despair.

    Pray!