FEBRUARY 13, 2025 – Many of us have been left to wonder: “What’s next—[e.g.] now that Co-President Trump and Defense Minister Hegseth have demonstrated they skipped the class in Basic Introductory Negotiations 101 [redundancy fully intended to underscore the point] by showing their cards to Putin before the game to sell Ukraine down the river has even commenced?”[1] But lest ye despair, allow me to describe the essence of an encounter I had today that ought to temper your despondency.
The contact took the form of a catch-up call with John Cross, a college friend/classmate of mine; a fellow “Polar Bear” who resides in Maine and was preparing to shovel snow during a narrow window of time between Nor’easters charging up the New England coast. By education, training and experience, John is an archeologist and anthropologist of the highest order and a life-long serious—and I do mean serious—student of history. During our undergraduate days he was a Polar Bear iceman (goalie), which says something of his athletic prowess and the good company he kept, since our college hockey team was the warranted pride of the school. Not only were they DIV III champs, but when they lined up on the ice, there stood not simply a group of first rate collegiate hockey players but a line of future PhDs (not one, but two of the group becoming archeologists), physicians, business leaders, and other contributors to the betterment of society; really solid citizens, who by general consensus were among our school’s best emissaries.
John has long served as Bowdoin’s Secretary of Development and College Relations, Office of Stewardship, and as a side gig, he writes for the Bowdoin alumni magazine. It is in this latter capacity where John’s skill as a scholar and talent as a writer are on full display. He’s accumulated a compendium of well-researched stories of Bowdoin alumni—those of high honor as well as a number of scoundrels, but in every case, colorful and fascinating. (Given the universal appeal of these accounts and how they’re interwoven with the nation’s history, I’ve urged John to work on having his collection published.)
John and I exchange correspondence intermittently and talk occasionally by phone, but we hadn’t yet exchanged our reactions to the aggressive actions by Presidents Trump and Musk since January 20. John and I share a common political outlook. As he sometimes jokes, “I’m somewhat to the left of Marx—Harpo, that is, and maybe Groucho[2].” This invites me to say, “I’m somewhat to the right of John Cross,” which gives the reader maximum flexibility in labeling each of us.
In any event, after we’d mutually vented modestly, John mentioned recent notable events and appearances on campus. Among them was a talk by Katie Jenner, who is a Bowdoin alumna (Class of ’99) and a reporter—writing for The New York Times and covering the DOJ. In her on-campus presentation Ms. Jenner focused on the common use of “unprecedented” to describe the circus tent that was once called the Oval Office. Examples: The suggestion that the Trump/Musk Administration will ignore court orders; or that the United States might try to seize control of Greenland or Gaza. The journalist is correct: ever since Trump 1.0 and the first smash-up by the bull(sh_ _ _er) in the china shop, people of my political ilk have favored use of “unprecedented” as the synonym of choice for the implicitly profane, “WTF?!” and the less incendiary, more geezerlike, “gobsmacked.” Just three weeks of Trump 2.0 (and Musk X.0) have inflated utterance of “unprecedented” a thousandfold.
“As Katie Jenner rightfully pointed out,” said John, “very little is in fact unprecedented. Look at President Jackson’s refusal to honor the court’s decision [in Worcester v. Georgia] or the corruption in the administration of Warren G. Harding.” With this I thought of Trump’s talk of taking over Greenland or Gaza or making Canada—all its provinces and territories—as the 51st state and the precedent of . . . President Polk’s 1846-48 land grab from Mexico.
Jenner’s observation served as a reminder to John and now me that as shocked and awed as we are by the Presidents Trump and Musk, few of their actions are “unprecedented.” This reality doesn’t excuse or neutralize the dangerous breach of laws, norms, or ethics but it does place the current Rule by Rapid Edicts in perspective: nothing much under the sun is new; we’ve been through a lot of bad stuff before, and yet . . . we survived it, and in many instances evolved beyond our dunderhead attitudes and actions.
At that juncture in our conversation, I offered my “glass half full” theory of history. I submitted that when studying history in depth but also in sufficient breadth, the learner faces a choice of interpretation: the glass of human civilization is half empty or . . . it’s half full. A mountain of evidence supports the view that our story is half empty. Look no further than at our penchant for war or the disastrous effects of disease or the adverse effects of climate change or countless other exigencies that have darkened our way—collectively, enough bad to eclipse the good. The glass half empty.
OR . . .
Consider how the world’s recovery from the greatest catastrophe ever to rock the planet—World War II. Yes, the aftermath was shaky, and defeat of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany led to a post-war order dominated by the Cold War and threat of nuclear holocaust, but from 1939 through much of 1945, cities and societies around the world that had been crushed by horrific death and destruction (think Warsaw, Gdansk, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), Stalingrad, Milan, Naples, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Shanghai, and Chongqing) were rebuilt, repopulated, and renewed. Moreover, in addition to post-war reconstruction, consider the full measure of miraculous things we’ve achieved over the wide arch of human endeavor. And along with these accomplishments are a few billion people who are, I sincerely believe, good people who do good things. Glass half full.
“The thing of it is,” I said to John, “we wouldn’t appreciate the good if we didn’t have the bad for contrast.”
Just then, I was called away by the urgent reminder that I was late for an appointment. In John’s case, snow beckoned as the clock wound down on the next Nor’easter. We concluded the call.
As I proceeded with the day’s demands, however, I did so with greater hope and faith than had been the case before our conversation. My exchange with this thoughtful friend and classmate had reversed my temporarily “half-empty” glass back to “half full.” In the process I’d traded “unprecedented” for reassurance of our resilience.
The call made me especially open and receptive to the next encounter, which sprang forth unexpectedly from the small and quirky stage of the “1st Class Auto” used car lot in a corner of the Twin Cities I rarely visit, even in transit. In tomorrow’s post I shall serve the reader another story of encouragement, which arose from that unlikely place. The experience bolstered further my “glass half full” view of this crazy country of ours. Please return so that I may help make your glass half full as well.
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1]Apparently they also skipped the class in International Diplomacy for Beginners 101 by keeping our NATO allies in the dark and working around President Zelensky. My editorial comment: shameful.
[2] Or something very close to this, anyway.
