With apologies and love to C. Dickens, Esq:

It was Hillary’s best of times; it was Trump’s worst of times. It was the age of wisdom of years of service; it was the age of foolishness of a wasted life. It was the epoch of belief in each other and our country; it was the epoch of the incredulity of otherwise credulous cretins. It was the season of beaming Light to the world; it was the season of fearing Darkness from the world. It was the spring of continued hope; it was the climate-denying winter of despair. We had everything before us; we had nothing before us because our greatness was behind us. We were all going direct to Heaven, led by a North Carolina preacher; we were all going direct the other way, taken there by a demon with imp’s hands.

Donald Trump looks at the world and sees enemies to flee, allies to flout, patsies to fleece and strong men to flatter. His convention reflected that, offering a way out of a dark labyrinth of terror that exists only in the fevered brains of a dwindling minority of cranks looking to regain the hegemony that chance and circumstance had devolved upon authoritarian white males through centuries of dungeon, fire and sword.

But in spite of dungeon, fire and sword, Hillary’s convention extolled the Faith of our Mothers and our Fathers, the creed that was written – to borrow a phrase – into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a Nation. “All folks are created equal,” she seemed to say, “let us show you.”

Yes, we can.

After the myopic, dystopic, frantic and frenetic Republican worldview on display in Trump’s Cleveland cacophony, the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia was a soothing and soaring symphony. Early disunity and the Debbie Wasserman Schultz kerfuffle could almost have been scripted, as they provided a jarring contrapuntal chord to start the piece. But harmonious moments through all four movements of the four nights, with only brief callbacks from hecklers in the vomitorium, made a decidedly prose candidate seem like Euterpe, the Muse of music, so that even her typically prosaic, cough-punctuated speech transcended her creaky voice to become a noble crescendo with depth, gravitas and the power to make walls come a-tumblin’ down.

Kudos to whomever designed this convention. As in every other aspect of this campaign, it showed how a professional, prepared candidacy can out-think, outmaneuver, and outfight a loud-mouthed palooka with a weak left, a slow right and an orange, glass jaw. Hillary and the Democrats hit him with Left uppercuts, Right hooks and jabs from the Center. Trump got worked in his corner, her corner, and the center of the ring.   He never laid a glove on her, but he did manage to stop most of her punches with his face.

This is more than a tale of two conventions, however.   We have now set the foundation for the remaining hundred days to this campaign, as well as the next four years of American history. The word has gone forth; there is a new philosophy in America, for a new American Century, and it is this: in a world beset by strife, in a nation benighted by indifference, in an election bedeviled by rage…

Love. Trumps. Hate.