You know, when things in America get genuinely upsetting,

I sometimes like to take a step back,

sidel unobtrusively to the door,

slip out, run to my car before anyone notices I'm gone,

drive to the airport, and catch a plane to one of the isolated islands of French Polynesia,

where I can while away the hours with my bare-breasted native lover to Hermana,

while dining on luscious local fruits and drinking the milk of coconuts,

preferably laced with vodka or possibly LSD,

whichever is more likely to transform this shrieking hellscape into a colorful star-speckel

delucination, something like the album cover of the magical mystery tour,

except without Paul being dead. But if that option is not available because of airplane schedules

or short supplies of really good drugs, sometimes instead, I remind myself,

that periods of insanity and disorder like this have been a reoccurring feature of American history.

Just this week, Michael Barone, the brilliant political analyst,

unless it was the Michael Barone who sells ice cream from that big white truck in your central park,

that's probably the political guy, right? Anyway, he wrote a helpful article in the New York Sun

pointing out that, quote, America goes crazy every 50 years or so, unquote.

Barone begins with discussing the War of 1812 when the British burned Washington,

DC to the ground before Andrew Jackson defeated their forces at the Battle of New Orleans.

And that really was crazy when you think about it because the British had just finished

burning Washington, DC to the ground. So defeating them at New Orleans was incredibly

ungrateful. We should have strewn their feet with roses and asked them to come back every few

...