Three Score and Twelve

Dis-Heartened

I’ve been – well – the correct term might be “dis-heartened”.  As any frequent reader of “Our America” probably knows, I  am consistently, some might say overly, optimistic about the future of our nation:  “The arc of the moral universe bending towards justice,” and all that.  And I still believe in American exceptionalism, in the idea that our nation, founded in Revolution by flawed men, can still become a “More Perfect Union”.  

But the “perfecting” is taking a hell-of-a-long time.  Maybe it’s the “Medicare thing”, the idea that at sixty-five, I may no longer see a time when we will be a Nation without strife.  I am confident that the United States will be better, but right now all I see is it moving backwards not forwards.   I’m not so sure how long it will take to change direction again – maybe beyond my Biblical three score and twelve (that’s only seven more years).  

Marching Backwards

We, as a nation, are marching firmly towards the past.  We have a Supreme Court that is turning the control over a women’s body to state governments, many dominated by right-wing male legislators only interested in pursuing their own wealth.   The Court is doing the same with the rights of what will soon by the majority of our Nation, those of color.  And state by state, the white minority is consolidating power.  

The contrived controversy over “Critical Race Theory”, created by the right-wing “think-tank” the Manhattan Institute, has convinced millions of parents their children are unable to “handle” the sins of their fathers.  Just a question:  how can we become a “more perfect union” without reckoning with the imperfections of the past?  Ignoring those flaws, is of itself Un-American.  But don’t dare teach children about those imperfections – or allow them to express their own views.  And they called us liberals “snowflakes”.

Idiocracy

The idiocracy that determines it’s better to ignore a pandemic than follow the science is not just frustrating, it’s immoral.  We are quietly approach 930,000 deaths from Covid,  “the World’s Number One” as a former President would say, and are so divided that nothing will stop us from reaching a million.  I’m reminded of the movie Meatballs, so many Americans are chanting with Bill Murray, “It just doesn’t matter, It just doesn’t matter.”   They are resigned to incapacity, and now are using trucks as the weapons of “FREE-DOM”. They just deny.  They go on with their lives – those that don’t die or aren’t affected by the losses.

There is a commercial for the travel site, Kayak, where they make fun of families split by “Kayak-deniers”.  It’s far too soon to be funny, and far too real.  There are too many families divided and friendships lost, to trivialize by commercializing the division.  I resent the ad, and I resent that it probably amuses folks on all sides of our polarized society.   But, like it or not, it does symbolize our national septicity.  

Don’t Look Up

I didn’t like the “in vogue” movie, Don’t Look Up, either, because I don’t like nihilistic stories without hope.  I didn’t like the popular Netflix series, House of Cards for the same reason.  That’s never been my view of life. But there is a whole lot of “not looking up” going on around here, a focus on internal life to the exclusion of everything else.  

Here in Ohio, a politician took a $60 million bribe from an energy company to get the state to pay for a failing nuclear plant.  And now, two years later, the politician hasn’t been tried for his crime. He’s even thinking of running for office again. And the company is still getting paid by the state.  “Don’t Look Up”, you might see that even the thieves in government are out in the open.  They are brazen, and guiltless, and Teflon.

It doesn’t seem like there’s much “bending towards justice” yet.

Geometry

It’s easy to think – well, just wait for another decade, when the Mitch McConnell’s and Donald Trump’s and, as my younger friends would say, the “old white dudes” will be dead.  But the thrust of our current universe seems to be going in the wrong direction, one of division instead of unity, ignorance instead of knowledge, hate instead of faith.  The arc of the moral universe looks suspiciously like an ellipse. 

I know optimism will return.  I’m subbing in a school, and down the hallway I hear the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King, speaking that last night in Memphis.  He went to the “mountain top”, and saw the “Promised Land”.  After all he had been through, he still had faith in America – the arc bending towards justice. If he could be optimistic in 1968, how can I be less in 2022.