EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE

Later this morning, Susie and I will go to DC to have dinner with my big sister, Barbara, and my son, Tobias, who is driving down from Philadelphia for the occasion.  We will fly into Washington National Airport, which was renamed Reagan National in memory of the late and utterly unlamented fortieth President.  I have in the past primly refused to call the airport by its proper name, imagining thereby that I was striking a tiny blow for truth, justice, and the American way.  This time, I reflected ruefully that I had been wrong to consider that B actor suffering from early signs of dementia to be the worst person I would ever see in the White House.  If I were a good deal younger and gifted with the ability to write History, I might try my hand at a multi-volume work tentatively entitled The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.