6:03 am
I’m frustrated.
Yesterday morning I wrote the bulk of a post that I posted a few minutes ago. It’s about choice and compromise and “we over me.” It wasn’t very clear or good, and is quite inconsequential – much of what I write is. I had planned to finish the post after work. But when I opened up the news as I sat down to eat… 14 children and a teacher shot and killed in an elementary school. The numbers are higher than that now. This news is on the heels of 10 people being shot and killed in a supermarket and another shooting at a California church. They haven’t even had the funerals for all of these victims. This is America.
I don’t have anything profound or moving to say about these tragedies or the state of our society. The shock factor, to some degree, has worn off and I’m tired. It’s not just the killings. It’s the rampant greed. It’s the fractured politics. It’s the division and loveless approach we take towards each other.
I’m trying to see more positive things in the world. The other day, I listened to an interview with the writer Ross Gay. He talked about the many delights in the world – I was struck with how pleasant he seemed. Then later, I was having a crappy drive home… people riding my ass, or cutting each other off, or yet another offensive and bigoted bumper sticker. I told myself to smile while cutting carrots – my go-to phrase that reminds me I can choose what I look at and choose how I see things. I smiled. I saw wild purple and white flowers on the mountainside. But then the headlines…. I can’t not see the violence, the greed, the choices we, as a society, make that don’t just ignore suffering, but perpetuate it.
I worry about the world that we’ve left for my daughter or her kids should she have them. I worry about my own ability to survive or thrive. Living, just being alive, is becoming untenable and dangerous. If the science is to be believed, and I believe the science, we are on the brink of a climate disaster. Inflation is at a 40 year high and corporate profits are at a 50 year high. Housing costs, food costs, health care costs, fuel costs are far outpacing wage increases for regular folk. Some reports indicate that rent rates have increased 17% and that the median cost of a new rental in the US is now over $1800/month. And then there’s the killings – in supermarkets, churches, and schools. Thomas Hobbes famously wrote, “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And now we can’t even count on it being short as a reasonable escape.
I blame my parent’s generation – the generation of Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump (though some more than others). They have been in power the longest and have done far too little to address the climate issue, the gun issue, the wages issue, the tax issue. All the while, their retirement portfolios fatten – feeding off of the backs of everyone else. I also blame our technocrats and our ivy league institutions – ever searching for ways to corner the market and make money off of money without considering the ethics involved. Constantly extracting: oil, minerals, wealth… hoarding and sucking the life out of anything that has value. I remember attending a talk at a chapter of a statistical society with my wife. This was after the market crash in 2008. The speaker, a professor at Penn, lamented that they churned out all of these finance gurus who developed models for the derivatives market, yet nobody seemed to think about what happens when it crashes or the lives that will be crushed. Collateral damage, I suppose. He pondered whether an elite university like Penn should be thinking differently about their role in churning out business majors and financiers – a nice afterthought. I also blame myself and my industry – the nonprofit industrial complex. We step in to help with our programs and coalitions which, to some extent, lets an abusive, unkind, and unjust economic system continue to operate guilt-free…. actually it’s worse than that, we ask for contributions and in return provide the means for which greed can wash its dirty hands and clear its sullied conscience.
And again, there’s the carnage. I have few words for this. In some respects, it’s just a more in-your-face version of the economic and cultural violence that goes on this country. Poor and middle class people have become pawns (though historically speaking, they always have been). They have been weaponized and turned against each other.
We may have the ingenuity and smarts to deal with real and serious problems, but instead, we focus on boogeyman issues, celebrity, or wealth. One recent sub-headline read “A 36-year-old chess prodigy built a software to speedily buy homes from afar for big investors, beating out everyday buyers.” Why can’t such ingenuity be put to use for the common good? Instead, we waste our time on fake outrage. We demonize people and communities who don’t look like us or don’t believe what we believe. We avoid teaching history and we ban books and we call people pedophiles or groomers or satanists – all because we cannot face our own ugliness – at least not in honest and remorseful ways… and the circus of distractions plays on whipping people into a frenzy about all of the wrong things.
7:30 pm
The impetus for this post, the declarative statement that I felt, but was afraid to write this morning was, “I hate this country.” I hate that we’re so arrogant and unkind. I hate that we’re so greedy and cruel. And as much as I know the answer isn’t to leave, or to disappear, or to just look away, I’m sure as hell tempted to drop out for a bit. I’m not afraid of compromise or honest conversations. I’m not afraid of living in uncomfortable spaces – those messy spots of ambiguity and painfully slow negotiation. I frequently say, I try to straddle the in-between. But when the extremes seem to be pulling further apart, the center cannot hold…. the middle ground is slowly crumbling beneath our feet, along with our visions of a great and prosperous nation that was, at one time, swift of mind and hopeful in spirit.
This Is America (warning: graphic content)