So Much One Can Live Without and Should

By Garrison Keillor, Garrison Keillor's Website

14 December 19

keep unsubscribing from junk mail and it seems that the simple act of unsubscribing opens the sluiceway to even more junk. I get offers to pay cash for my current home, to consolidate my debt, to save up to 50% on things I don’t want, to get a credit card for people with bad credit, a hair implant, introduce me to other lonely people, and so forth.

So I keep clicking and praise God for the Delete key, the invention of which ranks with Gutenberg’s movable type in the annals of human progress, not so much for eliminating junk mail as for eliminating one’s own dim-witted writing. Back in the typewriter age we had erasers and liquid white-out and so-called “Lift-Off Tape” or correctable ribbon, which was okay for fixing a misspelled word, but Delete enables you to remove whole pages of pretentious garbage from your writing such as the passage about the privilege of washing blackboards in Mrs. Moehlenbrock’s fourth-grade classroom at Benson School, which I just deleted here and unless I click on “Undo delete” which I will not do, you need never read it.

The urge to expunge is a powerful thing, admit it. A year ago, my wife and I moved from an enormous house to a 2 BR apartment and disposed of a dumpsterful of memorabilia, most of which we’d forgotten we had, and truckloads of comfy furniture that went to a charity that sets up young folks for housekeeping. I expected it to be painful; it was exhilarating — throwing out all of my college term papers so at last I can forget that young man.

At this moment, one-third of America wishes it could cleanse the nation of another one-third. One of the thirds possesses most of the guns and I am in the unarmed third that wants to change “manhole” to “maintenance aperture” and Indiana to Western Ohio and pays extra for non-GMO bottled water. It’s the gunners vs. the correctionists.

There is another third, sometimes called “moderates,” and I wrote a paragraph about them here but I’m deleting it now because it is bound to offend everybody.

The third I belong to wants America to be Scandinavia. I lived in Copenhagen for a couple years and doubt that Americans will take to herring as a main dish or become a nation where even conservatives are liberal and everyone rides a bicycle and wears a poncho in a bright primary color. Our bike lanes in America are primarily for young men delivering pad thai to your home. Nobody I know uses them.

The gunners own the middle of the country and the correctionists live in reservations on either coast and the middlings keep their heads down and observe radio silence.

We live in bubbles, and for me, the remarkable thing about the House Judiciary Committee hearing last week was the chance to hear an articulate and well-reasoned argument that disagreed with my own point of view. A person should have this experience more often.

Four law professors sat at the witness table and one of them, Jonathan Turley, argued against impeachment, that the process is moving with undue haste and has not established a solid foundation for such a radical act. I listened to him in wonder. The Republicans who should’ve been making the argument have wandered off into berserk corners and Professor Turley did their work for them as the other professors sat nearby and listened, no sneering, no insults. (For credibility’s sake, he had to aver that he hadn’t voted for Trump and didn’t agree with him.) But his testimony was so dramatic, it inspired death threats against him and his family. This is what we’ve come to in America. Respectful disagreement is in short supply and aggressive stupidity is running wild.

Well-reasoned disagreement is one of the chief benefits of a good marriage. I married, as you did, for affection and humor and to have someone to be naked with, but in addition I got a debate partner who knows more about the real world, having lived in New York — a violinist so she knows how to focus, has experienced poverty, has excellent social skills, and is deeply moved by Beethoven and Mahler and Puccini. Once I got mixed up with her, I was done with marital tragedy, Ibsen, O’Neill, all that, and part of a comedy dance team. I could say more but I would probably need to delete it.