Please be hesitant, Mr. President
The Column: 01.09.25
One man can do only so much and rather than deal with the prospect of war with Panama or Denmark, I’ve decided to think about winter, seeing as I’m spending a couple weeks down South and feel guilty about it, as I well should. It was bitterly cold when I left New York and when I got in the cab to go to JFK I was wearing no overcoat, no scarf or gloves, and the cabbie looked over his shoulder, wondering if he was going to have to contend with a lunatic. Meanwhile, dear friends of mine in Washington, D.C., employees of the deep state, are dealing with a blizzard, and friends in Alaska are living in darkness, and up in Toronto when Justin Trudeau announced his resignation as prime minister, he was brief; it was freezing, he didn’t want to be seen speaking in a pitiful trembly voice.
I’m 82 and so the prospect of a war of annexation with Canada doesn’t affect me personally, but I’d only point out that Republican states (PA, MI, ND, MT) with thinly defended borders would be easily invaded and if the war extends from January 20 into February and March, the wily Canucks may have some advantages. And when we win and our northern border extends deep into the Arctic, federal officials from Florida may be flying to the far reaches of Manitoba and be unable to play golf for extended periods of time. Just saying.
As a Minnesotan, I believe winter is a crucial part of growing up; it teaches you how to be happy under adverse conditions. Florida is fine for the sickly and delicate and those nearing the end of life’s journey, but the Lutheran Church should open dozens of winter camps for young Floridians to experience sleeping in a tent when it’s ten below zero, as I did when I was a Boy Scout. You lie in a close cluster of other Scouts, toasty warm but exhaling frost, and having eaten a hearty meal of mushroom stew and roasted squirrel, you face that inevitable moment when you must venture out alone and move your bowels. You don’t want to do it but you must. You drop your trousers, grab hold of a tree, squat and do your business, cleaning yourself with leaves, making sure they’re not poison ivy. You remember this for the rest of your life.
Winter is a pleasure, if you know what to do. You wear a scarf and gloves when you go out to play pond hockey and you keep warm by playing vigorously. Your face feels the chill, you breathe freezing air, but you are quite happy dashing around. The goalie needs to wear a heavy coat but you don’t. It’s exhilarating. Poets get awfully cold, sitting in a snowdrift, pen and paper in hand, and so most winter poems are about death. But runners do okay, snow shovelers, trash haulers, and of course old men who sit by the fire drinking ginger tea and reminiscing about their youth are just fine.
Winter is an excellent time for the young. The old people stay indoors but the young go out to wait for your school bus on minus-20 mornings, and you feel liberated. Snow is falling, headlights appear through the haze, you crouch in the ditch with a big snowdrift as a windbreak. The bears are hibernating, the timber wolves live farther north in tall-pine country, but there are coyotes around and of course snow snakes, so you learn to fend them off.
The best defense against coyotes is to crouch low and bare your teeth and make a low chuffing sound like a stallion makes, and the way to defend against snow snakes is to use foul language, which was a valuable lesson for a good Christian boy like me. “Heck” and “darn” and “shucks” and “dadburn it” will not get the job done, you must venture into the dark corners of the English language. I am an old man who never employs profanity, as my friends know very well, but in defense of my wife and daughter against vicious arctic reptiles I am prepared to go all the way.
I worry about children growing up in Florida, whether the year-round relaxation may leave them incapable of self-defense if the vicious Danes should attack America’s soft underbelly, spreading poisonous pastries to knock off the unsuspecting, in cahoots with maniacal Panamanians wielding pans of pernicious fishes from their isthmus. And let Mexico keep the gulf. We have golf. That’s enough.
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I grew up in the lake effect towns south of Buffalo, NY, so I too know a bit about winters and snow and cold. I was there for the (in)famous blizzard of '77, the likes of which had never been seen before or since. Those hypothetical Floridian Boy Scouts would not last a night in the campout you propose. One needs to grow up with such winters to absorb the tough lessons it teaches. Like you, Mr. Keillor, I now live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and long for the snow that so seldom makes an appearance here anymore.
As for the Canada/Greenland/Gulf of Mexico thing, I wish people would learn that such things are intentional distractions for the really nefarious plans up this new administration's sleeve. While we are all either laughing our heads or getting our hair on fire over things that will never happen, the GOP are ready to bring bills to the floor that will be horrifying to the very people who voted for him. This from Heather Cox Richardson's column on 1/8/25:
"Behind all the offense, though, things that matter deeply to the American people are going largely unnoticed.
MAGA representatives have been introducing a slew of measures to the new Congress, many of which incorporate the plans of Project 2025 into legislation. They call for turning over immigration to the states, privatizing veterans’ healthcare, and repealing the 1993 National Voting Rights Act, the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
Bills call for withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization; increasing oil and gas production on federal lands; abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA); allowing states to spend federal education money on private school vouchers; and removing the protection of transgender rights from schools.
Other measures would revoke security clearances for “certain former members of the intelligence community,” introduce a constitutional amendment to cap the Supreme Court at nine justices, and cut off federal funding to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (the office that successfully charged Trump with election interference) and the Fulton County (GA) District Attorney’s Office (the office that has charged Trump with criminal conspiracy).
And MAGA Republicans have proposed a bill to impose a national abortion ban, along with a bill urging Congress to support a consortium of antiabortion doctors for women because, the bill says, “health care should emphasize the whole woman, including her physical, mental, and spiritual wellness,” and “health care for women should also address the needs of men, families, and communities.”
Not to mention tariffs which are designed to raise money for tax cuts for the rich but would raise prices of everyday goods for the American consumer and like, most GOP proposals, hit low income workers the hardest. And during all of that Trump is already, before taking office, backing away on his promise to bring down grocery prices, saying that "once they are up, it's hard to bring them down."
This sane perspective is where we might all be if we were more circumspect or had grown up among the Bretheren.
You are so very good, sir, at seeing folly where others see The End.
Maybe my five years in St. Paul walking to school wearing snow pants that itched and a hat that was a complete embarrassment with its ear flaps and chin buckle, mittens knit by my grandmother with a string running through the back of my coat, maybe those years served me well and it has taken being rattled by the American people asking for another half decade of the former President running our big organization to activate my long-dormant sense of political irony.
Mr. Keillor is like the crossing guard who stood in the street in front of Groveland Park Elementary School on every 10 degree morning and smiled a genuine smile at me in the driving gale.