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These are the in-between times. The shadowlands, as C.S. Lewis put it. Neither here nor there. A moment in which we seem to be collectively holding our breath. Will America choose Donald Trump again, or can we stop worrying about the fever gripping our powerful neighbour? For a time, anyway? We are in the lull when all goes still before the wind picks up. The stakes seem high. What are we supposed to do?

It is about a half-mile walk from my childhood home in Harrison’s Corners to the bank of post office boxes at the intersection of Highway 18 and Avonmore Road. Nothing ever happened in Harrison’s Corners. A collision every couple of years. Neighbours arrested for spearfishing with flashlights. It was as big as scandals came. A rabid fox loose, staggering toward the house. This was news.

Our family had subscriptions to the Ottawa Citizen and the Standard-Freeholder. After pulling out the badly folded papers from the narrow post box, I would learn of continued fighting in Laos. Of starvation in Biafra. Of a Republican president impeached for attempting to spy on his Democratic opponents.

None of it came to Harrison’s Corners. None had the potential to reach our lives. It was too far away. Only the risk of Quebec leaving Canada created waves sufficiently high and close that could touch us. Even then.

One had to leave the Corners to join life—to be where things happened. It feels precious now.

C.S. Lewis may have been writing about the futility of our current predicament and our willingness to throw ourselves into the unfaithful silos of social media when writing The Weight of Glory in 1941, “a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of the spirit.”

The creative mind behind the world of Narnia suggested that “the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests.”

It is a heartwarming image upon which to linger between Thanksgiving and Pumpkinfest.

And yet.

The world had grown weary between the two wars. We had retreated to our corners. Hardship at home drove nations and communities to look inward. To dwell on domestic concerns. Even if they understood the threat of a rising fascist dictator and his promise to conquer much of the world and exterminate the Jewish people, we looked away. Hoped it would pass. It wasn’t our fight. What could we do?

Lewis understood the threat of comfort. Of complacency. He could see that the daily churning of “all economies, politics, laws, armies, and institutions” was having a numbing effect on his neighbours and friends— that detachment was contagious. Ultimately working against efforts to push back against tyrants.

His warnings of complacency came too late for millions of people. Perhaps it was unlikely to have made a difference. One man or woman speaking out can’t rouse a people gripped in slumber. Folks must decide for themselves not to stand by—to engage. It is hard to do. Courage often comes too late. Tyranny thrives in detachment. It grows in fearful people looking away.

Trump promises to be a dictator, to round up migrants, execute alleged drug dealers and fix crime with “one really violent day.” He will abandon Ukraine. He will let Poland, Moldova and the Baltic states twist in the face of Putin’s ambition. He will impose tariffs that will wreak global disorder. These are Trump’s words—but only a partial list of the horrors he and his acolytes seek to unleash. It seems reckless to dismiss his words as the bluster of a broken man (even if this is the correct diagnosis). He is too close to power of a scale that alters history.

It isn’t clear what we can do. Whether anything we could say or do would make a difference. Harrison’s Corners seems a safe place to be. But.

Surely, we must resist this urge; surely, we must remain vigilant and ready to respond.

Our comfort and distance, however, should not shield us from our duty to pay attention, our responsibility to engage in the twists and turns of the mundane grist of politics and news.

This isn’t a prescription for endless worrying, but rather a plea to resist resignation.

We’ve been here before.

rick@wellingtontimes.ca