Lessons

by Ian McEwan

By what logic or motivation or helpless surrender did we all, hour by hour, transport ourselves within a generation from the thrill of optimism at Berlin’s falling Wall to the storming of the American Capitol? He had thought 1989 was a portal, a wide opening to the future, with everyone streaming through. It was merely a peak. Now, from Jerusalem to New Mexico, walls were going up. So many lessons unlearned. The January assault on the Capitol could be merely a trough, a singular moment of shame to be discussed in wonder for years. Or a portal to a new kind of America, the present administration just an interregnum, a variant of Weimar. Meet me on the Avenue of the Heroes of January Sixth. From peak to midden in thirty years. Only the backward look, the well-researched history could tell peaks and troughs from portals.