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What Next?

After an exhausting year of a demonic administration, many of us are considering novel ways of making a change.

What haunts me is trying to imagine, not only what may follow this wreckage, but how much of it can be repaired?

Or must we somehow start largely over again?

Now that we have seen the previously unimaginable power the presidency has, what reforms might return it to being accountable?

Did anyone imagine the “bully pulpit”, in malignant hands, could so cow congress that the legislative branch would virtually cease to function?

Is the Supreme Court, that we used to think was the ultimate stop gap against abuse of power by the other two branches, now so corrupt in its toadying to this president, as to have destroyed its very purpose?

All these questions, while they point to the urgency of coming by-year elections, highlight a much deeper issue we face as a nation. Though we’re more sanguine about the founding of our nation than our high school civics led us to believe, we do know those who shaped our beginnings, did so in response to the kind of unchecked power that is bedeviling us now. The gilding of the White House is more than a symbol of how we have slipped off the rails as a nation.

Though I have no particular suggestion for how our institutions might be reshaped, I am persuaded that the basic underlying belief of our founders, that the innate dignity of every human being, means that no government should be able to demean even the least among us, is what must become our pilot light.

The next time you come across a person who is homeless, at least make eye contact. If you can muster the courage, say hello.

It is the start of what we must do to save our lonely souls.