I have not been blogging lately in part because I’ve been simultaneously preoccupied with what is happening in our country and desirous of avoiding exposure to it as much as possible. Even small dips left me so angry as to be nauseous. But through one or two trusted sources (there are only a handful of those, and none of them are professional news outlets) I’ve followed events enough to know what’s going on.

I was thinking about trying to do a summary of my observations, but frankly there’s too much there. I may try to do some extended posts in the future detailing each point: American exceptionalism, tolerance and other ‘will-o-the-wisp virtues,’ and a return to communal life being the chief items, but each requires too much discussion to deal with here.

For now all I’ll say is that this is one of those great historical disasters that do happen. We today often have a way of speaking as if all of that – the great wars, national transformations, redrawing of boundaries and so on – were in the past, which we in turn regard rather less as a part of our own identity than as a movie where we don’t like most of the characters. Now perhaps we’re waking up to the fact that it isn’t.

Welcome to history: you’ve always been here.

What the consequences of all this will be, I can’t say. No one can. Only that nothing will be as it was, and that the ways of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

“You shall be hated by all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall persevere unto the end, he shall be saved.” (Matt. 10:22)