Lament: All that’s old is new again

Watching television this evening we witnessed American politics torn at the seams:

• Harbingers of peril for a fragile democracy;
• Fear the Constitution will not stand, absent those to defend it;
• The intractable divide of the party system;
• Political leaders beset by personal vice; 
• Friends turned enemies by political disputes;
  
• The co-opting of so-called news media to serve the machine of gossip and propaganda;
• Subjugation of human beings due to the color of their skin …

All of this in a two-hour PBS documentary (1997) about the Jefferson era in U.S. history. 

We repeat history more often than we think, and little is truly unprecedented despite our recency bias telling us things have never been this bad.

Looking back, we can infer fixity of purpose for benevolent cause, despite vehement disputation about the means. History tends to camouflage sin and exaggerate virtue.

As for today in real time, we watched the Iowa Legislature vote to remove civil rights among its citizenry, and a U.S. president and vice president insult decency on a scale reminiscent of a January day four years ago.

How will the documentaries of the future tell the story of 2025? The more things change, the more they stay the same? Or that once again, the so-called “experiment of American democracy” survived a turn toward a dark and uncertain future?

Meanwhile, we pray the lament of Psalm 130 and sing the hope of Psalm 19. Lord in your mercy, may I trust in the kin-dom of God that is eternal, even as I pray your will be done on Earth.