There’s an old song that has been rolling around in my head for the last couple of weeks, and—like most of my earworms—it’s not one of my favorites. (The last one was “Dancing Queen,” and I was relieved when I finally got rid of it.) This one, however, led me back through a couple of dark tunnels of memory and made me realize that I and the country that I have often been proud of have become the punchline of a really bad joke.

You’ve heard the joke: A guy walks along with his head down, obviously depressed, and a helpful soul sees him and says, “Cheer up. Things could be worse.” The depressed guy considers this, sees the truth in it, and cheers up. Sure enough, things got worse. That’s how I feel about the shape of our country every day.

First, the song, then the memories. The song is George M. Cohen’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” written for his stage musical “George Washington, Jr.” It became, according to Library of Congress, the first song from a musical to sell more than a million copies of the sheet music. Since then, it’s become a patriotic staple, and I would imagine that there are few marching band members who haven’t played it multiple times.

Now the memory. About thirty years ago we were in a Sunday School class that had two Cuban refugee couples among its members. Nice people. Well educated. They had fled Castro’s Cuba with what they could carry and what they could hide. They were making a new life in Tucker.

Because the Sunday School class also had a member who was a tour agent, it took a trip to someplace nearby every year. That year, it was to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where we ate well and attended several shows.

The night that’s stuck in my memory must have been close to one of the more patriotic holidays; we were assaulted for about ninety minutes with various patriotic skits, musical presentations, and probably a monolog or two. Since I’m not usually given to extravagant displays of symbolic patriotism, I pretty much tuned out.

The finale finally arrived. A cast of dozens assembled on the stage, and a huge US flag unfurled as they sang “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” I was reflecting on the cheesiness of the whole thing when I looked at my Cuban friend. He was standing, his hand over his heart and his cheeks wet with tears.

I decided I had to re-evaluate my attitude. For too many years, I had enjoyed the privileges of being a straight, white male in a country that pretty much forced advantage on us. My friend knew something about what freedom was worth. He’d been without it. I decided then that I should appreciate what was good in this country much more and work much harder to correct what was not good.

My ear worm reminded me of that scene the other day. It also reminded me of another scene, the infamous video of Donald Trump groping an American flag at the 2020 CPAC meeting. I have no way of knowing whether his advances were consensual, but given Trump’s reputation and recorded remarks, I doubt it. Rather, I think he was figuratively doing to that flag what he’s been literally doing to the country.

Right now, I believe that our country stands somewhere between those two images—as a country who gives much and supports what we have called for centuries the American Dream and the country that gives to only a few and inflicts pain on the others. And in this coming year, the results of the midterm elections may be an irrevocable decision, pointing the government one way or the other.

The United States has always been a divided nation. The first political conspiracy I’m aware of was an attempt to oust George Washington in his first term. We’ve had divisions according to political party, according to race, according to religion, and any number of other differences. And the result of our differences has been that in its 250 years, the United States has done cruel things, stupid things and immoral things.

Now, we’re trying to do all three of those at the same time. We are no longer interning Japanese or forcing Native Americans onto reservations, but we are detaining and deporting people who have a legal right to be in the United States. We are not invading Granada, but we are invading Washington, Los Angeles, and Chicago. And we’re not (hopefully) manipulating the economies of South and Central American countries, but we’re starting trade wars, destabilizing the markets, and blowing boats out of the water, killing their occupants without disclosing any proof that we had the right to either destroy the boats or kill the occupants.

We smile at dictators and scold our allies.

And we’re still in the first year of Donald Trump’s four-year term. That’s probably the reason that the number of Americans looking to live abroad jumped by about 1,500%.

There are those, including myself, who feel that the United States, currently the world’s oldest government under the original management, will not withstand the wreckage that four years of Trump will cause. There are those, most with a good deal more knowledge than I have, who promote various methods of saving the country by shortening the Trump reign. I think most of those are bad ideas.

Almost everybody agrees that assassination is not a good option. In fact, I do not wish for the death of anyone. I hope that if there any such attempts they are stopped long before they get to Trump.

Removing him through the exercise of the 25^th amendment, as much as it might be justified, is also a bad idea. As with assassination, that begins a chain of succession that doesn’t measurably improve the leadership of this country.

I believe that our best option for pulling this country back from the brink is to flip the two houses of Congress to a supermajority of Democrats. Not only would it rebuild the guard rail that the Constitution calls for, but it would provide the votes to override a Trump veto. I don’t believe that his ego would tolerate that kind of rejection.

For two and a half centuries we’ve solved our problems at the ballot box. It is still our best remedy. But doing it requires two important efforts.

The first is to return to some regard for the truth. Trump makes up numbers, and within days, his minions are amplifying them all over social media and then to news programs. His cabinet members, chosen for their fealty to Trump, make up scientific studies and legal justifications, and when they run out of those, they calmly tell the oversight committees that they’re not going to talk about it. The first big step will be to require everyone to tell the truth and to make loud, even obscene noises when they don’t.

The second effort is probably more easily accomplished, given the rage we feel. Get out and vote. Sitting out the coming midterm elections is not a good option. There will be lines, and there will be efforts in some places to make voting more difficult than it needs to be, but that is a temporary inconvenience that may save the permanent destruction of the country.

I wish everyone could have stood beside my Cuban friend as he tearfully showed gratitude to a country that sometimes tried to live up to its ideals. But now it would be different. Trump just announced that refugee quotas would be a fraction of what they have been, and it was anticipated that most of those slots would be white South Africans. My Cuban friend probably couldn’t get into this country now. Instead of tears of gratitude, I imagine that he would be crying for a different reason.

I know I am.