Some broken hearts never mend, Some memories never end, Some tears will never dry, My love for you will never die*
When I’m faced with difficult decisions, moments of sadness, or when I’m contemplating the state of the world in tumultuous times, I often turn to country music, and its vulnerable and open-hearted lyrics in order to calm the swirl of my thoughts. In particular, I find solace and inspiration in the songs of Don Williams, whose voice defines the word mellow, and whose lyrics can hook a melancholy heart from the depths of despair and bring it to the surface of the soul. It was, therefore, to Don Williams I turned the other day when the news of the world sank my heart to a place so deep I didn’t think it would ever have the will to surface again.
As I cycled through my William’s playlist, “Some Broken Hearts” placed its barb very deep in my sadness, and Don began to reel it up so that I could look at it and try to understand the cause of the pain. Here is what I saw.
The last abdication to capture the world’s attention via public media occurred December 11, 1936, when England’s King Edward VIII gave up his throne to marry American Wallace Simpson “the woman I love.” In acknowledging the moral and political weight of his choice between his sovereign heritage and the love of his life, Edward said, “I have made this, the most serious decision of my life, only upon the single thought of what would, in the end, be best for all.”
On Thursday, June 1, 2017, a global audience watched and listened to another abdication, this one totally devoid of any moral contemplation or love, one fully freighted with the base metal scraps of political hatred, not only of the preceding administration, but of more than half of our fellow citizens, of our country, of our allies, of the world community, and of the planet itself. Despite his Bannon-penned assertion that “As President, I can put no other consideration before the wellbeing of American citizens,” there was on Donald Trump’s selfish mind no single thought of what would, in the end, be best for all.
The statistics Trump threw out in defense of his decision were cherry-picked, chaotically massaged, and typically, willfully, misinterpreted. They were spurious at best, with no thicker…
