People who regularly read in this space (all three of you) may remember the times I’ve mentioned my penchant for active listening to music in the company of Mozart. Of course, he’s only there in my imagination, and only then to provide a “second set of ears” to put what I’m hearing in a different context for comparison with my own judgement.
You probably do something like this, too. If you have visitors from out of state, or out of country, don’t you suddenly begin to see the familiar in a vastly different light? For example, some years ago when I accompanied a Japanese friend on a train trip to New York City, I remember passing through the approaches to center city Philadelphia and seeing the huge volume of mattresses, rusting appliances, car parts and other domestic trash that had been thrown down the embankments to lay along the tracks. Normally I would have just been dismissively disgusted, and basically ignored it. But in that moment, seeing it through his eyes, I took in every detail and was embarrassed at how bad it really was.
Something similar to my Mozart encounters happened to me recently while involved in my daily dose of watching the growing dissolution of our democracy on MS Now. What if my father, who passed away too early in 1981, was sitting there beside me watching Ari Melber? At that particular moment, Ari was centered in a triptych between two very bright black women. Well, obviously, if this were my initial imaginative encounter with him, before getting into the substance of what was being said, I’d have to explain some details.
“Yes, Pop, the TV is only about two inches thick, and, yes, it really is very clear, isn’t it.” “And, yes Pop, black people have come a long way–women, too.”
A life-long Republican, my Dad often mentioned his belief that the US Constitution was divinely inspired. Yet he was not anything like the MAGA Evangelical wacko RINOs of today. He was a well-read, learned man, in a time when knowing a lot about things came from print instead of looking at a screen. While he never publicly admitted it, I have every reason to believe he voted for JFK. Nor would he have bought into the current, Trump-inspired nonsense about Nixon having been framed.
Now, with the context of the intervening tech and social progress out of the way, unbelievable in and of itself, he could then start to fathom, from Ari’s conversation with those women, the fact that one highly deranged person has been able to violate and subvert both the spirit of the document he held so sacred, and the stability of each and every one of its institutions.
“No, Pop, we can’t any longer trust the FBI, the Justice Department, the Supreme Court, the FCC, the CDC or even the US military. The all have been taken over. He’s even threatened the stability of the planet itself. Better fasten your seatbelt, Pop, that ain’t even close to the half of it.”
It would be a lot for him to take in. But, then maybe he might get what was being described more quickly than I could imagine. Hadn’t he seen something like this before? Didn’t it happen in Germany during his younger years? But he probably wouldn’t have thought it could happen here, just like I and every other sane American. It seems his sacred document was not so sacred as he thought, as we thought. Perhaps those founding fathers were less influenced by God than a dose of European Enlightenment compromised by the prurient interests of slave owners. Maybe our constitution was a just a truce between good and evil. Certainly, as we watch the news together, Pop and I might share the thought that describing its current state in those terms would not be out of the question.
Part of me wishes Pop really were here, as I know he would be as enraged as I am, as you likely are, at our current state of affairs. And maybe he might have some insights that could dissuade me from the pessimism that it’s now too late – that the damage can never be undone. On the other hand, he was someone who never quite got computers, nor the Beatles. To see him have to rationalize his belief in the lasting viability of his sacred constitution and of the county it governs might just kill him all over again.
©2026, David B Bucher
