Thelma and Moriarty I can’t live with the view that the American Experiment is over. I share personal responsibility for how jacked-up our society gets and know our institutions could be better. However I look to my great uncle and aunt who were voters when FDR said in 1934 to a journalist that the New Deal had to succeed or else the country would dissolve. My relatives were telling me how residents had a vested interest in holding civilization together even when on tender hooks. They were a strange mix of being pissed at the system and yet refusing to bag the whole thing. I must ascribe to that simultaneous longsuffering and striving for the future.