“I live in the best country in the best of times.” That sentence has left my mouth plenty over the last ten years or so that I have been driving around America to pitch a tent. Sometimes I history camp by routing my travels so that I can see what I have read about. Civil War histories have sent me to many historic sites, including Appomattox Courthouse.

Robert E. Lee and Ulysses Grant spent ninety minutes in McLean House signing the surrender order of April 9, 1865, that was to end the Civil War. I spent an uneasy night camping in Buckingham State Forest just a few miles away, thinking about the Civil War in 2013. Hanging around such places brings out ghosts. Visits to Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam, and Vicksburg are even more disturbing.

Of course, it did not really end in 1865. It raged on through Jim Crow. I grew up in the segregated south that made the Civil War into the noble War Between the States. It came to another near end around 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson pushed through civil rights legislation that federally mandated freedom for all, or so I thought.

It was still not over. The loss of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s successor, in 1968 to Richard Nixon featured the openly pro-segregationist George Wallace and set up the underground “us v them” politics that leaders in the Republican party have exploited for decades to undermine the credibility of those who wanted to the civil war to end.

The primary underlying plank of “us v them” is white supremacy. A significant portion of people with my pale skin type need to elevate a vision of themselves in some long ago society by attacking others, especially African-Americans. They attached themselves to a lying narcissist who railroaded the Central Park Five into the penitentiary for a crime they did not commit. They cheered on that supporter of the Obama birther doctrine. Trump’s racism is a hallmark that draws fans to his brand.

He took the continuing war to a new climax again on January 6, 2020, by inciting a mob to storm the nation’s holiest place, the Capitol building, where Congress was in session to declare Joe Biden as the next president. The insurrection was broadcast live for all to see.

The Capitol invaders waved the rebel battle flag adopted by Southern resisters as a symbol of their noble cause. The insurrectionists went too far this time. The majority of Americans do not approve of a President sending a mob into the sanctuary of democracy to kill, injure, deface, pillage, and destroy.

The arc of history has bent further forward but the continuing civil war has only subsided. The national Republican partly leadership is still controlled by President Trump, and 187 Republican legislators voted to perpetuate the lie that somehow the 2020 election was rigged despite no proof at all. The appalling act has some of those whose careers hinge on Trump’s popularity pulling back, but there is no wholesale disavowal of the dark force that undergirds their party.

For the war to finally end Republicans must reclaim their traditional conservative party. Its existence is necessary for balance and full representation of all views in government, but it can not be the party of Trump and hatred of “the other.” It could become the party that used to draw my interest and respect.

My love for our country is strained and will remain so as I contemplate the vitriol unleashed by Trump’s presidency. The war continues and we do not live in the best country in the world in the best of times.