In Remembrance of Passing Time

by Henry Schulte

With a tip of the hat to Marcel Proust, right about now, like me and Monsieur Proust, you’ve been asking yourself where did the year go? And five minutes from now, you’re going to ask yourself the same thing again; where did 2025 go?

Worse, you’ll also wonder where did the last ten years go? 20? And so on.

I was shocked to learn on December 8^th it had been 45 years since John Lennon had been killed. I had to confirm that.

I vividly recall seeing the shocking images of the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding on January 18, 1986. In the ‘80s! It stunned the country, if not the world.

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1993, conservatives were convinced he was going to bring America to her knees. However, looking back, by today’s standards, Bubba would be considered a conservative.

In 2001, a year after all the computers were going to shut down because of Y2K, Americans were speechless watching in real time the collapse of iconic buildings filled with human beings. Images that will never leave our minds and yet where did the time go? Families are still dealing with the aftermath.

I remember waking up learning we were at war with Iraq when George W launched “Shock and Awe.” I was very uneasy. Things didn’t go well and my heart breaks for all the young men and women who died and/or came home wounded.

When a complete unknown emerged on the political arena, I instinctively didn’t like what he was selling and how he was selling it. Barack Obama was promising the moon and his smooth delivery lulled thousands of voters into believing his snake oil pitch. During the Messiah’s reign, I was sure America couldn’t survive his load of horse manure. “Hope and Change” became a term for nothing more than to spawn more racism. Sending America back decades.

The country is still trying to recover from it.

Fast forward to The Donald. When he said he was going to run for president the first time I didn’t give it a second thought. I thought it was a joke and there was no way he could win the White House. My wife, on the other hand, thought differently and liked him from the outset. I felt knowing how Democrats rig elections, even if it was close, he couldn’t overcome the cheating machine. It was when my wife and I were visiting Missouri in October of 2016, we saw the countryside filled with Trump signs did I give a little nod and thought he might have a chance.

Now it was the lefties’ turn who said the country couldn’t survive Trump and who launched an all-out “Shock and Awe” of their own, pulling out all the corruption stops they could contrive. They would make his presidency miserable and try and oust him, no matter what.

The country survived. In fact, it thrived. It was doing better than it had in fifty years or more.

The Democrats used the “down” time and became more organized and reconfigured their powerful cheating machine. They managed to slip in a man who absolutely did not belong, did not deserve to be, and was not capable of being, President of the United States of America.

Again, the political playing field flipped, and it was the conservatives who wondered how the country was going to last the next four years. We watched millions of people from around the world walk into our country and were paid to stay here at our cost. We watched crime go up. Inflation like we haven’t seen in decades. Debt soaring. Gas prices off the charts. Medical doctors chopping off body parts of children. Drugs flooding the streets. And the term racism became the weapon to shut people up.

America was in serious decline time, hanging by a thread to the foundation of what made us great. We were plunging over the ledge of (in)sanity.

And all the while Democrats could still never let go of Trump. He was the evil demon trying to undermine the psychosis of liberal wokeness that infected our American core.

Then the craziest thing happened, Donald Trump won again. The Democrats’ and the left’s worst nightmare and come true. How could it possibly have happened after everything they threw at him? No one should have survived the nastiest personal assaults that had ever been launched against a single human being. It was not possible. And yet, Trump pulled it off.

The country flipped yet again. The Democrats had to catch their breath. They ran out of ideas and schemes to bring Trump down. Only this time around Trump knew what he was up against and how to make his vision of a better America come true.

No president, no leader on the planet, did more and accomplished more in less than a year in office, than President Trump.

Titles like Nazi, King, Racist, Xenophobe, Homophobe, didn’t stick. Marches fell flat.

With nearly one year gone since Trump was elected and now standing on the horizon of year number two, with the sunset behind me and a new sun about to rise, a new fracas is about to begin.

The left can’t let it go. Their hatred is so all consuming; let the midterm battles begin. If they can’t bring the Trumpster down with underhanded tactics, then they’ll undermine his power.

Nothing Democrats do anymore is for the American people. Their entire obsessive single-mindedness is to “Get Trump.” This year, however, we’ll see things shift increasingly more with their attacks fomenting on JD Vance.

Then before we know it, the midterms will be behind us, and the sunrise of 2026 will be staring at us in our faces. Should the Democrats prevail, holy hell! If the Republicans hold on, I don’t think the Chinese can produce enough Xanax.

If I make it to 2028, I’ll look back and ask myself, where did the last three years go? By that time, I won’t really care anymore. I’ll be looking skyward hoping that’s the direction I’ll be eventually going.

Fasten your seatbelts, 2026 is going to be a doozy.

Happy New Year.

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