Passing the Baton 🏃‍♂️

...and none too soon.

(I’m approaching this piece cautiously and with an underlying sense of trepidation. I’m speaking after the latest execution of young protesters 📣 in Minneapolis, but only sparingly directly to it. They require only my witness and yours. We know what we see 👀. We know what it is. Now what?).

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Photo by ran liwen on Unsplash

First, the world has passed me by. 🤔

It’s taken me a while to grasp that. As human beings, we’re prone to denial. The inability to ’matter’ (the passive invisibility of irrelevance) is nearly as traumatic as death itself. And like death, it’s inevitable at some point. I’m OK with it; In some ways, it relieves me of the pressure to perform responsibly in this terrible day and time, other than as I find myself occasionally seized with a contrary notion in a momentary frenzy of unreality.

Somewhere along my lengthy path, it occurred to me that the scenery was no longer familiar. We’re in a time and in a place that I no longer recognize. The rules have changed. The shared unspoken assumptions are different. Brains work differently. I find myself in the personally embarrassing position of having to say things out loud that no one should have to say in the twenty-first century in America. I feel a compulsion to try to explain things that in a previous and more lucid time were part of common understanding and would have required no explanation at all.

I’m no longer in any position (if I ever was) to make any useful observations or give any useful advice. I don’t understand any of this, and I no longer wish to try to understand it. To “understand” would cost me my sanity and my soul. We’re in a place of national and (quite possibly) irredeemable madness.

I’ll give two quick and fairly minor examples and then I’ll move on:

(1) I hear all the time on cable-tv and online that “Democrats” oppose this or that MAGA policy or Trump initiative. Is rigid partisan alignment with one or another political party all that is required to be in opposition to certain things? Are there not cases where it’s a matter of plain common sense, or just ordinary humanity? I don’t know anymore, but I can say for sure that there was a time when that was the case. I lived in it for decades. Not everything was better then, but that part was.

(2) Another small annoyance that demonstrates to me a larger issue is encapsulated in the phrase “Critics oppose…” or “Critics warn…” etc. What else would critics do? Just tell me what they said and let me decide what they are. I get irritated by this modern tendency to dumb-down language and guide us to some preordained and simplistic binary conclusion.

That was the easy part for me. It’s going to get harder as we move forward. 🙂________________________

Secondly, there are things that can’t be fixed (Or even if maybe they could be, it’s really hard and very uncertain😕).

As some of you may have surmised if you’ve been alert, I’ve tended for years now to become impatient and irritated at the perpetual tendency to theorize and complain back-and-forth (among primarily our like-minded tribes) about Trump and the MAGA revolution such as it is. We’ll do it again today for sure: We’ll chatter like magpies and give each other headaches and indigestion. Then like Sisyphus and the boulder, we’ll wait for the inevitable next provocation and do it all again.

I’m no different than anyone else. We all share this instinct to huddle and to commiserate. I’ve certainly felt it myself. In fact, I’ve had personal experience with it directly in my own life over…decades (?). Without going into overt detail, I’ll stipulate that I grew-up in an immediate family of five in a periodically dysfunctional home. Episodic, bender-style alcoholism was a way of life that punctuated an otherwise-normal household in ways that would not be believed (I can barely believe them myself and I was there for much of it). The difficult earlier traumas eventually gave way to a certain resigned and detached numbness, and an emptiness of spirit (There are many useful studies about alcoholic families these days that describe all this. Not so much then).

Through it all, we talked (and talked; and then talked some more). We talked to each other. We talked to ministers and doctors and counselors and policemen and friends and extended family members. At some point, the immediate crisis would subside. We would rest for a while and go on about our lives as if nothing was amiss. As sure as night follows day, it would flare again and we would return to our usual manic talking routine (The truth is that we developed over time a morbid fascination with the whole business. It became a sort of obsessive entertainment: What might happen this time? How low could it go? How bizarre could it get? Does any of that feel familiar?).

This went on with interruptions and stops-and-starts for every bit of thirty-five years. We were able to do essentially absolutely nothing of constructive value to break this relentless cycle. The circle of life turned on its axis. The illness eventually resolved into old age and death. Our torrents of words and theories over the years had precisely the same effect as if we had done nothing at all (which is in fact, pretty much what we did do in the end). We made a choice by refusing to make one in a situation where (understandably) none of the options seemed clear and there were no obvious convenient answers.

I think this current national tragic impasse has awakened in me the memories of my own private struggles from years ago, and that is what makes me feel such familiar and acute PTSD/anxiety over it. I don’t know what to do 🥴. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. Every path forward presents its unique risks and dangers. Every path is uncertain. The failure to choose any path also comes at a cost (thirty-five years in my personal case) and is of course a choice of its own.

If there’s any chance to rescue ourselves (short of more-or-less conventionally waiting it out and hoping for the best) it’s going to require strong, intelligent, disciplined, and courageous leadership. It will have to be able to properly assess risks and then take calculated actions around those it deems acceptable. It’s likely to involve personal danger (in fact, it already has) and one must understand and accept that up front. There can be no advance guarantees that anything can work successfully.

(Or if things drift far south, you can hold-out for thirty-five years and let nature take its course. I won’t be around for that. 🙂).