By Edward Miller

My journalism career began the year of John Kennedy’s assassination, picked up the pace during the turmoil of Civil Rights demonstrations and urban riots, endured yet another Kennedy assassination and then reached a crescendo of intensity during the Vietnam War and Watergate. It was an extraordinary decade fueling an adrenaline rush of news.

By comparison, today’s rush has reached a dizzying warp speed within months, not years:

• A nation that purports to invite “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” tries to apply a religious test and slam the door with a cynical “Never mind” on those masses.
• A nation that brags about the most advanced medical treatment in the world passes cruel measures that would deny that coverage to millions. Thousands will die if the action stands.
• A nation that pretends to live under the rule of law stands by as a prime suspect is allowed to fire his persistent investigator after first asking him to back off his investigation.
• A nation that justifies all manner of mischief and persecution under the banner of national security looks aside as its leader passes secrets to the enemy.

Civil rights was a noble cause worth pursuing.

Vietnam was a tragic mistake worth protesting.

Watergate was a sad chapter distinguished only by the politicians who put their country above their party and drove a miscreant president from office.

Sadly, there is nothing ennobling about what we’re enduring now. Just when we thought that deceit and mendacity had reached a nadir, the news gets worse. We’re running out of adjectives of astonishment to describe our worst prophesies unfolding every day. As Rachel Maddow said the other night, “Hyperbole is dead.”

What’s not dead is a vigorous press. Day after day newspapers, networks, political websites and bloggers rise to the challenge of digging out the truth. In response the administration slings the slurs of “fake,” but its defensiveness is unpersuasive.

Also alive and well is citizen resistance. Last week I met two grandmothers working at a voter registration table outside a Walmart in suburban Atlanta. It was their first venture into political activism. I asked them “Why now?” Their answer was simple. “He’s gone too far.”

Hyperbole may be dead, but not the ire of citizens who feel betrayed. In that we can find hope.