“Time is a flat circle.”
—Rustin Cohle

Rust is an unreliable character with known mental health and substance abuse issues, as well as being fictional, but he makes an interesting point here. There are cycles in life, and if you stick around long enough you start to notice the patterns.

For instance 20 years ago, in 2004, I was mourning both the re-election of a hated president and the death of a longtime feline companion. In that case it was George W. Bush and Junior the cat.

20 years before that was 1984, when Ronald Reagan won his second term. I wasn’t as political then as I am now, but I knew enough to be upset about it. And if I’m remembering right, that was also the year my childhood cats passed away. (I wasn’t living with them at the time.)

This year, same again. Each repetition has been a little worse than the last, which makes me worry about 2044. But that’s a long way off and by then I’d be 77, and possibly just glad to be alive. Or not. Who knows what the future holds?

I wasn’t around in 1964, which was the year of Lyndon Johnson, and I don’t know how or if that fits the pattern. In any case I don’t want to belabor the point. It’s just something that I noticed.

I should clarify that when I say it’s gotten a little worse each time, I mean politically. And by worse I guess I mean “less understandable.” Ronnie was a bad man who did bad things, but you could understand why people liked him; he did the avuncular grandpa thing so convincingly, and all the throat-slitting happened behind closed doors.

The re-election of W was a hard pill to swallow given what a disaster his first term was. But it was explainable partly as reflexive post 9/11 rallying and partly as the result of the most nefarious, sustained, and successful campaign of dirty tricks maybe ever.

This year’s Clusterfuck was so beyond all that, so off-the-charts sickening, that my noggin still throbs every time I think about it. In the end I think the only way I can explain it to myself is as a national act of sheer nihilism: People are so fed up with the status quo that they want to blow up the economy, burn science at the stake, and leave Washington a smoking hole in the ground. What they think is going to replace it, I have no idea, and I don’t think they do either.

Maybe when the smoke clears it’ll be just the one guy with his spray tan of invincibility, and he’ll tell us what to do. Sounds like a great plan!

On a strictly personal level, 2004 was unquestionably the worst of the three years. In fact it was probably the worst year of my life. But the next year was kind of a rebirth, which is how these cycles seem to go. That’s something to be thankful for.

Here’s wishing you a holiday full of love and joy with a sumptuous repast and no political discussions. See you on the other side.