It is widely reported today that former Congressman, SecDef and Vice President Dick Cheney died yesterday. Cheney was 84.
He was a resident of Jackson Hole (hole=valley), and thus almost a neighbor. Powerful during the Bush II years, the tides of recent history have been unkind to him, to his daughter, to his President, and to his preferred neocon policies.
The fierce loyalty that marked the Cheneys, father and daughter, meant being left behind like the oxbow lakes a river leaves behind when it straightens it course. Like the Bushes - pere et fils - whom they served, the Cheney legacy is as losers to the Trump/MAGA movement that remade the Republican Party over their bitter objections.
I am reminded of the words Shakespeare imagined from the mouth of Mark Anthony, speaking at the funeral of Julius Caesar.
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.
So let it be with Cheney.
