Letter to the editor: Nostalgic perspectives

Even though agreement makes for a dull debate Mr. Geiger provided some recent punditry that permitted me that perspective I previously promised him — with no shortage for the nature of nostalgia or expression of irony either.

I am gratified that the Electric Light Orchestra survived the millennium and is still appreciated by (some) of that namesake generation. Except instead of on an IPOD I saw a shirtless Jeff Lynne in 1976 at the ole Big Mac arena do his Chewbacca impersonation during their “Eldorado” tour!

(Mr. Lynne was so hirsute as to make Robin Williams look like a shaved monk! I also saw God, and went with my own Evil Woman, though that’s another tale that bores even me by now!)

My point and perspective being that nostalgia often seems to be a way to forget facts in order to preserve feelings and all at the expense of making reality conform with convictions, just as we’ve just shared the same nostalgia from vastly different 4-D distances.

Hence Nixon is demonized still despite being the last POTUS for all America who ended the Viet Nam war, opened a China then under mass murder Mao (How might China be “nostalgic” of HIM I wonder?) and formed the nascent EPA when rivers were burning and before its acronym morphed into an epithet.

Meanwhile Reagan is still deified despite arming enemies against allies to illegally fund nun-rapers and whose legman for those illegalities is now “nostalgically” extolled as an expert pundit and authority against the outrages of others. (Keep going south, Ollie — until you meet your Master in Gehenna/Hell!)

So too it might come to be that future nostalgias forming now will transform from feelings into something with fealty for facts. Or not, depending upon how much healing we feel history needs for not conforming to our biases of how many uncommitted evils we seek or see just because they must be.

Jeffrey H. Miller
Saguache