Author’s Note: This commentary accompanies the initial public release of the “WER” Sketchbook, a project that attempts to capture someof the extraordinary work from The Greatest Generation who faced challenges that must have appeared (to them) as large as the ones that confront us today. So, forgive us. We are publishing “A Little Traveling Music” tomorrow. We are writing “Life in the Fall” about this historic year now, of which the essay below is another installment. And “WER Sketches” helps us keep it all in perspective. More about that and some of the back list titles that have new developments as this week unfolds.

– Vic

Signs of the Times

(We read the Cowboy State Daily, an actual print newspaper with a digital edition that keeps us in touch with a pal in the Square State of Wyoming. We had been meaning to write to you about one of the recent stories. We first saw the sign above when it was newer and the Hitching Post hotel was still erect behind it in Cheyenne, Wyoming, a very long time ago).

The Hitching Post had been the place where members and lobbyists stayed during the active sessions of bicameral state legislature. That was a group of 62-members in the Wyoming House and a 31-members of the state Senate. You can imagine that the hotel probably had more truth floating around the bar than the corridors and offices at the Capitol.

That was one of the two surprises for us this morning in the messaging. Apparently someone was living in the base of the Hitching Post sign until the bulldozers showed up. In the next message in the stack was word from India, which is anything but square in the shape of their state. In Mumbai, a town that changed its name from Bombay, a gigantic billboard collapsed, killing 14 people and injuring several dozen more. City officials confirmed the 100-foot-tall billboard collapsed on top of a gas station during a major thunderstorm with high wind gusts and a heavy rainfall.

Back here? Other authors are at work. Former Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not comment directly on that collapse of signage, though she had her own. She released a new book called a book she calls “Say More.” We liked her poise when she served in a difficult position. But the new book may bring public attention to some of the events the Blue campaign was hoping Americans would forget.

Will her current version change anything? We doubt it. We are in a roaring tumult that is going someplace and we are just along for the ride. The scenery is interesting in motion.

Those were this morning’s signs of the times. In the background was another one, from the National Legislature, which featured some nearly inchoate shouting between three members of the powerful House Committee on Oversight. The dramatic interlude has been played several times on the big screen, the emotions of the speakers impassioned and the expressions on the older male members of the Committee just inchoate. Baffled, in fact. That is a sign of the times as well.

The Oversight Committee now has meetings conducted in a version of English not commonly understood about impeaching a Cabinet Secretary at DoJ. And at increasing volume.

Things had been threatening to get somnolent in the battles over on The Hill. It had been about budgets and cash for Allies overseas. Impeaching DoJ Secretary Merrick Garland was another part of the legal swirl in progress from top to bottom in our new system of justice. A local prosecutor in New York is trying a former President for multiple felonies in his court over an expired misdemeanor charge. Others down here on the Potomac pellucid shores want to impeach a sitting President. We think it is about something familiar done to someone else but will come to nothing with great uproar.

Up the street, two Supreme Court Justices are under vigorous attack. It appears to be about what their wives have been up to, either in their professional lives or how they hung a flag on their lawn three years ago. But the matter is of course not about them, but about what their husbands might be thinking about something else.

So, those are some of the signs of the times. Some of them are collapsing. People are living in other ones. All contain elements of uncertainty.

Here in what used to be part of the Old District of Columbia, we expected the next paroxysm of campaign hysteria to rise with the candidates on the trail. The debates and conventions are looming.

The ‘branches and sequels’ phrase is one we Salts used in military planning for uncertain times. A decision today will cause unexpected results, a branch in the expected outcomes. The ‘sequels’ part is what happens when the path ahead alters direction, either in small ways or ones that lead in completely new and startling directions.

The ones in front today? In the old world in which we operated with relative efficiency, we would expect the coming debate to have something in common with the recent State of the Union address. The President made it all the way through an important appearance without major miscues. Or so they tell us in the messaging, so maybe it will work.

The campaign is lurching forward on another front. His teleprompter has made him appear in all sorts of places to appeal to distinct groups of prospective voters where there is apparent weakness.

Recent ones have resulted in alienating supporters of Israel and appealing to supporters of Hamas, who are camped out on campuses though they are partly professional demonstrators. Voters of color were the focus of attention yesterday. The President delivered a commencement speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta. It was supposed to shore up his support in a key demographic at the historically Black college founded in 1867 to educate newly freed students.

Sign of the times? While at the podium, he tempered his ad-kibbed remarks, saying he did not want to get in trouble. We were not quite sure who that would be in trouble with, exactly. Dr. Jill? That is just another sign of the times. A lot of decisions will have to be made by whoever it is that is making them. Could be fun!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com