ANOTHER STRAW IN THE WIND

For me, the last eight days of the year are a special circle of Dante's Inferno.  Not only are they an endless three-day weekend, when nothing is open and even the mail is disrupted, it is also a time when one's favorite TV hosts are on vacation and the scrubs are suited up.  In addition, there is nothing to watch but wall-to-wall retrospectives of the year's news, which I have already absorbed, digested, excreted, and tried to forget.  The days are short, the nights are long, the sun is low in the sky even when it is up, and worst of all, you are supposed to be chuckling and cheerful and happy.  SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, does not begin to capture it.

In the midst of all this gloom, an obscure Republican operative, recruited to flesh out an MSNBC panel, made an observation that brought a warm glow to my heart and momentarily lifted me out of the Slough of Despond.  Talking about the probability that 2018 would see a Democratic electoral wave, he said, "the Democrats cannot wait to vote."

"My God," I thought, "that is exactly right.!  We are not just prepared to voted, or likely to vote, we cannot wait to vote."  All across America there are millions of people who are eager to cast a ballot against Trump and the Republicans.  I have never seen this kind of energy on the left..

This is going to be a good year.  Now, can we just dispense with New Year's Eve and get back to regular order?