The other day I caught my mind in the act of rewriting history. I was driving and I had a sudden memory -- that is, the memory of a situation suddenly came to my mind. The memory was exquisitely detailed, of me riding in a car and being yelled at by one of my parents.
Later on, recounting this to my wife, I realized that I had falsified the memory. I had swapped the roles. The actual memory was of riding in a car and yelling at one of my parents. Unfortunately, that memory is much less useful for blaming some or all of my current behavior on parent-inflicted childhood trauma.
I'm happy that I caught myself in the act of lying to myself, but of course it's never pleasant to have such a personal reminder of Man's fallen nature.
But this brings to mind something I heard this weekend in St. Louis. We were at the wedding of a couple of college friends, and therefore the old gang (such as it was) was all together again. On the whole we are skinnier, drink less, and go to sleep earlier than we did in college. In a word, older. But just as liberal. You see, my wife and I are the token conservatives among our college friends.
Which brings me to the unbelievable comment one of our friends made.
This friend is a native (liberal) Californian who now lives in Missouri. Missouri, you will recall, was where John Ashcroft used to be a senator before he was defeated in 2000 by Mel Carnahan (deceased, D-MO). In Carnahan's place, Democratic Missouri governor (Bob Holden, D) appointed Mel's widow Jean Carnahan to the Senate, leaving the Senate split 50-50 until Jim Jeffords took his fateful leap.
The comment was, "If I'd known then what I know now, I would have voted for Ashcroft. He's the devil incarnate, but I'd rather have him as a Senator than as Attorney General."
My immediate reaction was, Yeah, right. You would have voted for Ashcroft, thus giving the Republicans a Jeffords-proof majority in the Senate. In 2000, there weren't any other conservative AG candidates in the entire country. If not for Ashcroft's Senate defeat, Bush would have been forced to ask Janet Reno to stay on another four years.
I believe I said, "Hmmm."
Self-deception is never pretty.