Concord, this town in New Hampshire not far from here, was the scene of a sort of burlesque, not to say ubuesque, coronation, which must make more than one turn in his grave. By winning his party’s primary, in the heart of a state that has played a historic role for democracy, Donald Trump stuck his tongue out not only at Nikki Haley and American progressives, but also at what the city of Concord.
This small town was the cradle of one of the most progressive philosophical movements: the American transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Nature) and Henry David Thoreau (Walden), which also included Louisa May Alcott (Doctor March’s Four Daughters takes place in Concord); his father, Amos, philosopher; Nathaniel Hawthorne, prolific writer; and Margaret Fuller, essayist and feminist, mother of Buckminster Fuller, writer and architect (sphere of the United States pavilion at Expo 67, in Montreal). This American philosophy, inspired by German and English romanticism and oriental philosophies, influenced the “Beat Generation”, the hippie movement, the environmental movement, the abolitionist movement, the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, Gandhi, and carries its echoes, with still no longer relevant, until today.
If the ghosts of these people exist, their melancholy must be great.
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