Cities burn — while Nero tweets.
Help wanted. Country in pain. Will need more than 140 characters to fix it.
What the actual hell is going on in our country? It’s having a complete chaotic, emotional breakdown in living color for all to see. And we can blame no one but ourselves. We see evidence of our blindness in cities across the country, literally on fire. As a sixties era teen, I remember stark visions of race riots I never thought would be a terrible déjà vu in 2020. Yet, I don’t think I was ever naïve enough to think our country finally got the hint that it had to grow the heck up and faced who we are.
We are a nation built on slavery. We like to pride ourselves on all we’ve accomplished these 300 years but we had a lot of help we’ve never acknowledged, never rewarded, never made reparations to. We hold our fearful place as the only authentically important piece of the food chain though we fought a war against those who believed they were the master race. We harbor our own dark beliefs, even as we pretend to be the welcoming melting pot. Oh, cosmetically we have that respectable thin patina of tolerance, of measured acceptance of people who don’t look like us but the fault lines lie in the cracks. And all it takes is that flame of hurt and pain to be ignited for the full light of racism and inequity to be clearly seen. As it’s been often said, if nothing changes, nothing changes.
Of course there are bright spots, even in our burning cities, of unity, understanding and community. We see hopeful images of police taking a knee, extending a hand, expressing their sorrow. We glimpse protesting mothers who want more for their children, students striving for justice, and grandparents who’ve tiredly been here before. We watch those of every color and race, gay and straight, men and women marching in a leaderless vacuum. And it is clear even to those marching across the pond in sympathy, that the man voted into the highest office in the land has brought us to one of our lowest in history.
Of course, as counterpoint to people’s peaceful protesting of justified anger at yet another unwarranted racial killing, are the throwers of rocks, bottles, and words of hate. They are the misanthropes on the fringe, whose motives are not righteous rage but violent anarchy. Organized on the dark web and in plain sight, agitators are not yearning for true change but merely for the current protest to turn on its head. Though desperate to see beyond the bricks and torches, it can be a daunting, terrible task to separate the factions between those who hope and those who hate.
If I hadn’t been a visual junkie of this presidential clown circus from the beginning, I might have been completely shocked that peaceful DC protesters were maced and bombarded by flash bang grenades just to clear the way for a hypocritical bible-holding photo-op. I might have been horrified at the clear dog whistle to the same people who toted AR-15s to protest, not human rights but rights to a haircut, by insinuating protection of their 2nd amendment rights. I might have wondered why, when the nation was still reeling from a pandemic’s 100,000 deaths and record unemployment, the mask-less, tone-deaf leader of the free world went to a bunker instead of a podium to offer inspiration and peace.
Even now, the administration manure keeps stinking up the place. Instead of looking in the proverbial mirror, pointing to the Radical Left and ANTIFA seem a whole lot handier, though unfounded. We have been pitted, American against American, like no other time since the Civil War. We’ve already been primed that if the MAGA Messiah loses the election, it was obviously unfairly rigged. As we look toward that election time, hopefully, we’ll skirt, or at the very least survive, a return of COVID-19. But, will we thrive? Can we believe anything in a political sinkhole of lies and blame? Can we rely at all on anything that comes from the resolute desk where the buck indeed stops.
At these times, it’s almost embarrassing to be white. For all our problems, in comparison to so many, we are the privileged because we’ve never had to fight, often for our very lives, just because our skin isn’t the right shade. We can be in solidarity with the other, yet never truly know what it is to be them — because we never were. And this wholly white administration took full advantage of that. Packed like swampy sardines with the rich elite, the crony loyalists’ dismantled critical government oversights, like that on the police department (thank you, Jeff Session) Voter suppression is another happy tool of the Make America White again gang and white supremacists among them have had free rein. And don’t hold your breath for judges to help. While we were looking over there, courts have been quietly packed with young white judges with extreme conservative agendas.
Oh, but we just put a rocket in space. Yea.
No, I am not surprised. I am angry. There seemed always to be marches of one type or another through my lifetime and while I’m grateful to live in a country where our right to do that is embedded in our 1st Amendment. But,when the hell do we stop marching — and start listening? Start doing? Start changing? The solutions to our country’s woes are above my pay grade but until we figure out how to have justice for ALL, we will have true happiness for none.
Racism is the true virus that hides deep within our collective national DNA. It underscores our history, drives our economics and incites our society’s divisions. When people believe other people are disposable, are less, that families can be torn apart and babies stashed in cages, what can we expect to happen? Chaos. Just maybe, we’ll strive not to be ‘great again’, but truly great — for the first time.
