So, I wrote a long post in response to this post, E, and accidently deleted it and this will be a condensed version of that with the general idea and fewer personal anecdotes. 

First, the title I gave this thread comes from two writers that had an impact on me. Both are now deceased, Kurt Vonnegut and Cormac McCarthy. Now, Vonnegut I found early in life and had read probably most of his work by the time I finished high school. McCarthy I came to later, probably in my 30s. These guys are very different writers. In a Vonnegut story through what the characters experienced you really got a sense that as human beings we are all in this together and that this is generally both the joy of life and what can cause many of our problems. 

That certainly applies now, as we have all been strapped into a ride we can't get off of by 75 million of our fellow Americans. We have to take the ride, like it or not, thanks to them and however they reasoned out with themselves that it was good idea to vote for Donald Trump. 

Vonnegut also used to say we should recognize the moments in life that are good or beautiful. He said we should stop and ask in these moments "If this isn't nice, what is?" I believe was the phrase. 

As I get older, I do this a lot now. I take a lot of solace in being with other people and just having a simple good time. Food, drink, and good company go a long, long, way to making a person feel better. A book, music, the great outdoors. Moments that leave you feeling you do have a connection with the rest of the world. Honestly, Vonnegut gave me those feelings. For a long time, I really wanted to meet him, in person, his writing just spoke to me so loud and clear. 

Cormac McCarthy was not that kind of writer. In most of his stories, his characters were lucky to survive of they did and generally the world they were in was a place that was pretty damn hostile and all they were doing in life is trying to outrun the moment when it finally does you in. 

When Kurt got older, his writing changed, obviously due to age, the stage of life he was in, and that the hope he had as a younger man, that humanity would learn from its mistakes, had all but dried up. I did not like that change when it happened but now just about 60 myself, I totally understand the bitterness that comes with watching people continue to make the same mistakes. We have to keep being taught the same lessons again and again and that is heartbreaking and exhausting. Reading later Vonnegut, that had become where he was at. To some extent I vowed when I read that, to try not to go there myself. Almost 60, I now realize how hard that is. 

Now as well as asking myself "If this isn't nice, what is?" I also ask "How many more times can I do this?" 

McCarthy wrote some harrowing stories. Blood Meridian is probably my favorite. That one, after a sort of humorous and obvious beginning, becomes a nonstop slaughter with a group of guys rampaging across the west killing pretty much everything they come across. It is pretty nuts and almost written like one long run-on sentence. He creates a character in it called the Judge, that is pretty much the bad guy to end all bad guys. He's brilliant, loves to dance, loves music, and pretty much is evil incarnate... and he is charming. Just what you want in fictional villain.

The first stunt the judge pulls in the story happens in a revival tent where a preacher is holding a church service, and he walks into the tent and rapidly turns it into a total riot with people wanting to kill each other and burn it to the ground. Needless to say, I thought of this scene when on January 6th, a mob attacked our capitol. Let's just say I felt there was much shared by the rioters in McCarthy's novel and those we had to watch in real life... particularly that they both had been stoked up by total bullshit and how sadly easy that was to do.

Anyway, everybody is probably familiar with McCarthy's story No Country for Old Men, as it was made into a fantastic film, really one of the best films of the last 3o or 40 years, in my opinion. When I went to see this in a theater the audience in the theater, many of them, did not like it. I had that "Wow, that was a masterpiece!" kind of experience that happens less and less to me as I age. I don't know if that is me or just that less and less people have an interest in making that kind of film or telling that kind of story. 

So, I don't know if people in that theater with me understood the story. They hated the ending and really hated the dream that Tommy Lee Jones tells his wife he had to wrap it all up, about his father riding past him in the dark, carrying a torch, a fire. 

This is where I think McCarthy and Vonnegut come together in a way in my head. At the end of his life, Vonnegut had determined that he lived in a world, a country, that was no country for old men. McCarthy would write this story, about the sheriff Jones plays realizing that he lived in a country that was no country for old men. 

In the story, Sheriff Bell, (Jones) is trying to find Moss (Josh Brolin) before Anton Chigurh (Bardem) does. Obviously, Chigurh represents evil, the evil we have to do battle with again and again as human beings. Bell is always one step behind Chigurh and Moss is always just one step ahead... or trying to remain so.

Bell knows that Moss can't outrun this force, that as each moment passes the more likely it has become that Chigurh is going to find Moss first and kill him. It is just a matter of time. The way the story ends, people in that theater with me seemed to think that Bell just gives up and lets Chigurh het away.