the progressive perspective
His name is Dennis.
Five years of living 60 or 70 yards away, just over the backyard fence, I really should’ve known that already.
I stood on his front step, shaking his hand and explaining that the posts that should’ve been holding up a couple of sections of our shared fence had rotted out. He’d noticed it, too.
Yeah, we should replace them.
“It’s a good garden and a healthy one,” he says when asked about a flailing U.S. economy. “Its trees are healthy and so are its shrubs and flowers…. I agree with the President: everything in it will grow strong in due course.”
His interviewer, a late-night TV talk show host, believes Chance is speaking figuratively; the audience does as well, both those in the studio and millions more across the country. They all take him for a brilliant man who advises the president on economic policy.
He’s not.