Annotation

Now in these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ-forgetting, Christ-haunted death dealing Western world I came to myself in a grove of young pines and the question came to me: has it happened at last. -Walker Percy, Love In the Ruins

If you have not read Love In the Ruins, you should, now. It was published in 1971, and Percy has been gone now for a good while, but as you go ease your way through the first chapter you will get the unnerving feeling that he had a deep knowledge of America and its problems.  As a companion to Mr. Percy I also commend to you opinion articles from today's New York Times.  This one, by the conservative Catholic Ross Douthat, and this one by the more liberal Thomas Friedman. You will notice that Friedman, perhaps by nature is more optimistic, both are critical of our current leadership.  But soak that in and listen to more of Percy:

Undoubtedly something is about to happen.

Or is it that something has stopped happening?

Is it that God has at last removed his blessing from the U.S.A. and what we feel now is just the clank of the old historical machinery, the sudden jerking ahead of the roller coaster car as the chain catches hold and carries us back into history with its ordinary catastrophes, carries us out and up toward the brink of that felicitous and privileged siding where even unbelievers admitted that if it was not God who blessed the U.S.A., then at least some good luck had befallen us, and that now the blessing or the luck is over, the machinery clanks and the chain catches hold and the cars jerk forward?

I am both comforted and disturbed by the way that a book that is older than me can reflect the anxiety that I feel about current events.  On the one hand, my whole life has been lived since a point in history when these "ordinary catastrophes" seemed destined to bring us down.  We have had a few to be sure.  But our survival doesn't remove the conviction that Percy was right when he said:

These are bad times.  Principalities and powers are everywhere victorious. Wickedness flourishes in high places.

The culture that Percy describes in 1971 fictional terms is a little too familiar to 2017 reality:

The center did not hold. (Quoting Yeats)

However the Gross National Product continues to rise.

His fictional vision of a divided country includes Lefts and Knotheads.  The Knotheads were the evolution of the conservatives, who took a political bungle and turned being knotheaded as in obtuse to being Knotheaded as in stalwart and steadfast in defense of traditional values.  The Lefts also had taken a derogatory nickname given to them by the right and embraced perhaps the wrong parts of it.

Both political parties have had their triumphs.

The Lefts succeeded in removing "In God We Trust," from pennies.

The Knotheads enacted a law requiring compulsory prayer in the black public schools and made funds available for birth control in Africa, Asia, and Alabama.

Oh yeah and there is a perpetual war in Ecuador, which has been going on for fifteen years and "divided the country further."

Not exactly our best war.

The U.S.A had sided with South Ecuador, which is largely Christian, believing in God and the sacredness of the individual, etcetera, etcetera.  The only trouble is that South Ecuador is owned by ninety-eight Catholic families with Swiss bank accounts, is governed by a general, and so is not what you would call an ideal democracy.  North Ecuador, on the other hand, which many U.S. liberals support, is Maoist-Communist and has so far murdered two hundred thousand civilians, including liberals who did not welcome communism with open arms. Not our best war, and now in its sixteenth year.

Okay, enough already, I just needed to tiptoe through the tulips of some "fiction" that I love.  Because reality is just bumming me out. All things considered, at least Percy can make me laugh as he describes all too presciently the world that we live in.