My 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 was offended that those curiously quick to write essays about who broke the party were usually those who’d backed the policies that broke it. Lately conservative thinkers and journalists had taken to making clear their disdain for the white working class. I had actually not known they looked down on them. I deeply resented it and it pained me. If you’re a writer lucky enough to have thoughts and be paid to express them and there are Americans on the ground struggling, suffering—some of them making mistakes, some unlucky—you don’t owe them your airy, well-put contempt, you owe them your loyalty. They too have given a portion of their love to this great project, and they are in trouble.
A few nights earlier, I’d moderated a panel in New York, on, yes, the ironic soundtrack of election year 2016, “Hamilton.” At one point I quoted a line. It is when Eliza sings, just as war has come and things are bleak: “How lucky we are to be alive right now.” As I quoted it my voice caught. I asked a friend later if he’d noticed. Yes, he said, quizzically, comfortingly, we did.
