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“Have they buried him yet?” I kept asking last week. Observances of former President George H.W. Bush’s death seemed to go on forever. For a week or more, media were completely dominated by commemorations of his passing. Services held in Maine, Texas, Washington, DC, and elsewhere were extensively covered. Very few stories have that much staying power in America’s public consciousness anymore, so why was it so hard to finally put old George to rest and move on?
It was a combination of factors, I think. He was the last president from the World War II generation, or “The Greatest Generation,” as NBC’s Tom Brokaw called it. When former senator, presidential candidate, and fellow WWII vet Bob Dole paid his respects to Bush, he had to be assisted to stand from his wheelchair in order to salute. Very few of that generation remain with us and soon they will all be gone. Not only will they be put to rest, but so, we fear, will the values by which they lived.
To them, family, church, and country mattered most. Not everyone from that era lived by those values but no one disputed them as ideals. Today there is no general agreement on any of them. Bush was married for more than seventy years. That he loved his wife and was loved back by her no one doubted. Except when he lay in state at the Capitol, most remembrances were held in churches where his extended family — and it is extensive — participated. The final theme dominant in the wall-to-wall coverage was his service to country beginning in WWII and continuing through his presidency.
Five current and former presidents were seated in the front row at Bush’s service in Washington. Of those, all but Trump remain in their original marriages, but lies and coverups of marital infidelities led to the impeachment of President Clinton — and may for President Trump as well. Last week’s release of data from the Mueller investigation prompted soon-to-be US House committee chairmen to salivate over the prospect of impeaching Trump for alleged campaign finance violations in the form of payoffs to two professed mistresses. It’s likely that many presidents have been unfaithful and some biographers have documented their infidelities. The same is true of kings, queens, and other past leaders, but publication was usually delayed until after they died. Not anymore.
Most dictionaries still define family as: “a group consisting of parents and children living in the same household,” but that description is now disputed by many calling themselves “progressives.” They see traditional family as a source of oppression, a haven for “the patriarchy.” Homosexual and transgender activists tend to agree and work to broaden the definition to include almost any grouping of human beings wishing to address themselves as such. If we haven’t reached that point already, most children will soon be born into a collection of people not comprised of a mother, a father, and children.
The rest is here.