Midnight Ride

It is now 3:54 am and I have just returned from a watchful midnight drive in my new Cadillac to the city and back.  I was unable to sleep. The forecast weather today is sunny and 74°F.  It is Saturday, September 30th, the day fortuitously scheduled for our annual family luncheon at the golf club. The weather outlook for the upcoming week is equally favourable with a forecast high of 80°F on Wednesday, declining to 65°F next Saturday before transitioning to 55°F the following day. I mention these details because I blame the unseasonably warm temperatures for my sleeplessness.  I got up after midnight to turn on the A/C.  When that didn’t quell my insomnia I relented accordingly.  Besides I hadn’t previously had much opportunity to test the new car for night-time driving. I am happy to report that the midnight endeavour was not without its profit including my unintentional and now improved acquaintance with OnStar (out of curiosity I had pressed the green status button) .

OnStar Corporation is a subsidiary of General Motors that provides subscription-based communications, in-vehicle security, emergency services, turn-by-turn navigation, and remote diagnostics systems throughout the United States and Canada.

I found the midnight quality of the news (CNN, MSNBC and NPR) a higher standard than during the day. The universal preoccupation on those American networks is the outlook for Trump in particular and for America and the world in general. I was interested to hear the generalized summary of world affairs is a contest between competing entitlements; that is, whether one believes in universality or exclusivity. Not surprisingly the comparison arose of the historic competition in the 1860s between the North and the South.  It was further suggested that this divergence translates worldwide to a competition between democracy and autocracy.

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was an American lawyer, politician, and statesman who served as the 16th president of the United States from 1861 until his assassination in 1865. Lincoln led the Union through the American Civil War to defend the nation as a constitutional union and succeeded in defeating the insurgent Confederacy, abolishing slavery, bolstering the federal government, and modernizing the U.S. economy.

These historic challenges were further advanced as evidence that change and improvement are possible. Pointedly the January 6th, 2021 insurrection by mostly Republican interests on Capitol Hill was identified as a failed civil war, putatively the final turning point in the direction of American politics. Naturally this event is aligned with Trump’s personal legal battles.

“During more than a hundred years there has been in our island no tumult of sufficient importance to be called an insurrection; nor has the law been once borne down either by popular fury or by regal tyranny: public credit has been held sacred: the administration of justice has been pure: even in times which might by Englishmen be justly called evil times, we have enjoyed what almost every other nation in the world would have considered as an ample measure of civil and religious freedom. ”

Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 1
Thomas Babington Macaulay

It should not be alarming that in this period of enormous wealth for many Americans, they are attaching themselves to autocracy to preserve their interests, not unlike the Confederate States did preceding the awakening of the cotton season. Whether one should anticipate that a defeat of Trump similar to the defeat of the Confederates will occur is of course yet unknown. I suppose if one accepts the maxim that history repeats itself then we should likewise adopt the possibility that good things can likewise transpire as they did in the past.  Meanwhile everyone is on tenterhooks including those with whom I regularly exchange intelligence in Canada.

As I drove along the highway during my midnight ride I encountered from time to time – mostly in the occasional dips in the road – a collection of inhibiting fog. I proceeded cautiously. No doubt things will clear as the day progresses and we awakening to new possibilities.