I just read that J.D. Vance is going to be Trump’s running mate. I groaned for about 30 seconds. I didn’t think he’d go with Vance, I felt he’d go with someone more consistently subordinate, with less charisma. But Trump seems to have more confidence now than before. He’s a big star, especially after surviving the effort at assassination; he knows it and will play it to the roof. It’s also clear that his campaign is better managed than before, the crazy rhetoric—and the Republican platform—more controlled.

So here we are, two strong men faced by a pallid, waxy president, a man I don’t believe can govern for another 4-1/2 years, and a vice president who, rightly or wrongly, is not seen as strong. A close friend said, “If only he’d shot half an inch to the left,” referring to the would-be assassin. I couldn’t summon even the tee in a tee-hee. Nothing to chuckle about here.

People make it sound like it’s all over. Trump leading in so many battleground states faced by an opposition party that is cowardly and timid.

I’m reminded of Steve Bannon’s words to David Brooks before the former went to prison. He accused liberals of a lack of confidence; I thought he was right. MAGA folks take pride in American history, in their stories about what makes this country great, about what made their families flourish even if they don’t anymore.

What do liberals take pride in? Not much these days. Today, with the verdict on Trump’s keeping top secret papers in his Florida manse and the announcement re Vance, you could almost feel the confidence plummeting.

Where does basic confidence come from?

I still believe that neither Trump nor Biden will be in the White House in late January.

I think of James Hillman’s words: “Our traits do not fit together; human nature is not a smooth amalgam … Left at the end are unbridgeable gaps. In late years we are full of holes. Openings.”

He wrote this in his book on aging, arguing that at some point we’re past the need to prove or improve ourselves, and can therefore live with greater dissonance than before. We make peace with unevenness, with inconsistencies in our personality, with dueling voices that don’t reconcile.

I think of my mother’s advice on clothes. She believed in matching things. The blouse had to match the skirt and the shoes; she would change handbags for the purpose of matching, only to find that she’d left her wallet in the wrong handbag. Finally, she liked anything that was a cream color. “This matches with everything,” she’d say.

I don’t believe anything matches with everything. In fact, I’m less and less of a matcher. I believe in Hillman’s unbridgeable gaps; looking to bridge it all in order to arrive at one unified meaning is a waste of effort. Instead, can I see the holes as openings?

“Home is not just a place but an irrevocable condition,” Bonnie Jo Campbell write in her terrific novel, The Waters. I had to mull it over.

I used to think of coming home as arriving in a place of familiarity and comfort. I thought of my mother’s Jewish cooking and baked goods: the soups and fish, the Viennese yeast cakes she baked. I think of my sister’s home where I sleep longer than anywhere else (including my own home, where have to I get up each morning to feed Aussie), our old jokes, the teasing banter about the habits that don’t leave us and the people we have in common. Home is the place where I go to be with like-minded people.

But what if home isn’t that, but an irrevocable condition? A condition of dueling narratives and values, disparate voices both outside and in? Isn’t the place of multiplicity and difference my real home?

On a day like today I know I’m not backing off my practice and values. The triumphant banners and booming exhortations in the Republic Convention will go on all week. They will not dispose me favorably towards Joe Biden and his parochial enablers, who seem to think that when push comes to shove, we’ll hold our nose and vote for Joe. If that’s the best they can do, I don’t wish them luck. I wish for a convention that’s full of new faces vying and competing, stating their claims to a new generation of leadership. That would be way more exciting than the Republican anointing that will take place this week.

Regardless, I will look for the openings in the holes of dissension. There I will find inspiration and renewal; they don’t die.