The last liberal tears
By Marc Munro Dion
I sometimes take the long way home from work, driving through the twisted roads of a nearby suburb that was a farm town when my grandmother was a girl. There are still deep woods, New England stone walls and creeks not trapped in a culvert. And, if you wanted to spend a long time looking, you might be able to find a pasture with a couple of cows.
But the small farm is largely done here, as it is in most of America and, while we say we would like to go back to "simpler times," I never met a man who was nostalgic for using an outhouse or picking cotton by hand, and I knew men who had done both.
Still, we cling to something of the past - if not the ugly facts of rugged individualism, then at least to a poorly painted picture of our disease-riddled, work-broken ancestors.
Around a curve in the road, just before the entrance ramp to the interstate, there is a house. It's well-kept. The lawn is mowed and green and the shutters are painted a light blue that goes well against the white walls of the house. It is exactly the kind of house you'd live in if you were a heavy equipment operator making good money.
There's a sign on the front lawn, a heavy laminated sign, about the size of a coffee-table book featuring the beauties of The Holy Land. On the sign, there are pictures of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Michael Pence.
"Trump/Pence" the sign reads. "Make Liberals Cry Again."
I drive past the sign dry-eyed. No lump in my throat. No hiccupping sob.
Far away from these rain-weeping gray stone walls, the Supreme Court pitches out another Donald Trump nuisance case. In Georgia, they counted the same votes three times in 34 days, and Joe Biden won every time. If you stand on the steps of any courthouse in America, you have to jump to the side just to avoid the lawsuits being thrown out the front door.
This house on this two-mile stretch of road is the last house to have a Trump sign in the front yard. All of the Biden/Harris signs are gone and the one lone sign that said "BLM" has been gone for maybe six weeks.
Maybe we are moving on.
In a way, there's not much difference between a Pet Rock and a president, or between a president and a zoo gorilla that becomes famous. Oh, the stakes are higher for a president than they are for the gorilla. Other than conspiracy nut jobs, no one pays much attention to anything former President Bill Clinton says or does. Pizzagate is dead. Russian collusion is wheezing its last. Stormy Daniels is back to earning an honest living.
Presidents and scandals come and go like boy bands, arriving and disappearing ever faster, gobbled up by a 24-hour news cycle, crackpot YouTube videos and the whining, feedback screech of the right-wing talk radio hosts.
I think, someday, maybe at some snowy New England dusk, the owner of the white house on the curved road may ease out into his front yard and pull up the sign. Maybe he'll walk out and back quietly, or maybe he'll stomp out angrily.
The 2016 vintage of Liberal Tears may not be available next year, so I hope that guy has a bottle down in the cellar to sip during the inauguration.
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