Politics Gone Amuck

The district superintendent of the church Patricia and I attend spoke recently and used the term, “Politics Gone Amuck” to describe where our nation finds itself currently. I wrote it down because it struck me that his words capture what we are feeling, what we are sensing is going on in our nation. 
There is a cry welling up within us as we feel the ground shifting under us, and the presidential elections are bringing it to the fore. As a nation, we used to be fairly close together, in the center, leaning only a little left or right with the political parties working with one another, even liking each other. But that has ruptured now. Our nation no longer agrees on even core issues, such as the definition of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
As we as citizens flounder in search of something to hold tightly to, we embrace candidates with behaviors we would not have taken a second look at in traditional times.
National columnist Peggy Noonan recently wrote an emotional piece on the seismic shift taking place in America, and on the “Moment” that its gravity came home to her.  My wife, Patricia, cried as she read it to me; I listened quietly, then later had my cry off in my office. Noonan wrote that her “Moment came a month ago. I’d recently told a friend my emotions felt too close to the surface—for months history had been going through me, and I felt like a vibrating fork. I had not been laughing at the splintering of a great political party but mourning it. Something of me had gone into it. Party elites seemed to have no idea why it was shattering, which meant they wouldn’t be able to repair it, whatever happens with Mr. Trump…
“I watched dumbly, tiredly. Then for no reason—this is true, it just doesn’t sound it—I thought of an old  Paul Simon song that had been crossing my mind, ‘The Boy in the Bubble.’ I muted the TV, found the song on YouTube, and listened as I stared at the soundless mile of cars and the soundless demonstrators. As the lyrics came—‘The way we look to a distant constellation / That’s dying in a corner of the sky / . . . Don’t cry baby / Don’t cry’—my eyes filled with tears. And a sob welled up, and I put my hands to my face and sobbed, silently, for I suppose a minute.
“Because my country is in trouble. Because I felt anguish at all the estrangements. Because some things that shouldn’t have changed have changed. Because too much is being lost. Because the great choice in a nation of 320 million may come down to Crazy Man versus Criminal.
“And yes, I know this is all personal, and not column-ish. But that was my Moment. You’ll feel better the next day, I promise, but you won’t be able to tell yourself that this is history as usual anymore. This is big, what we’re living through.”
Art Hall
From the Bible:  “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, a King, who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. Jeremiah 23:5