Vox Populi:

I remember the phrase from my high school American history textbook: “The Era of Good Feeling.” Did I get that one correct on the multiple choice test? Did I identify it with the administrations of James Monroe? Probably I did. Probably I also asked my teacher, an earnest yet good-natured young man who probably moved into some other vocational endeavor not long after, something to the effect that if there were a capitalized “Era of Good Feeling” did that mean everything else in American history was an “Era of Bad Feeling”? Or did it not work that way? Was it, rather, that the original era existed all by itself, that comparisons were uncalled for, that it was a little episode in the nation’s not very long history, a quiet crumb at the loud feast. I don’t recall my teacher answering such a question, though I do recall his habitual shrug and half-smile. A degree of adolescent sarcasm enlivened his day. He claimed he wanted to make us think.

   I can’t say that the phrase has haunted me. I only find myself dusting it off because we are so manifestly in an Era of Ill Will. I will let go of Era of Bad Feeling because modern times has seemed one long era of such feeling. Perhaps if one parses all the wars, plagues, persecutions, and slaughters, all times qualify. “Ill will,” however, seems particularly apposite to the Age of Trump. Here is someone who enjoys hectoring, bullying, lying, ridiculing, mocking, dismissing, disrespecting, casting blame and who makes a joke of it, thereby having it both ways. Brought up as I was by parents who were positive Americans in the sense that they believed in good will toward other Americans, who believed that friendliness was a cardinal virtue, that “How you doing?” was an honest question, I have been taken aback by the deluge of ill will Trump has unleashed. Is this one nation under vituperation? Is the sum of the greatness he seeks to call forth “again,” nothing more than a small mountain of resentment? 

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