I remember an America before it went nuts. This is not an old white man’s nostalgia for a ‘blah blah sonny when I was a boy in simpler times’ semi-dementia warbling. That America was a mess and lots of the signs were flashing red about the culture wars, guns, environmental destruction, our love of mindless spectacle and our eroding ability to focus on complexity, but pre-Columbine, pre-9/11, pre-Iraq War, and pre-Internet, we at least were reasonably civil, we hadn’t started describing each other as enemies, political and cultural paranoia had not become an implacable force, Covid had not shredded our manners, the Internet and social media had not harmed our ability to concentrate and made our attention spans rival those of squirrels, racism hadn’t become the key ingredient holding together one of the 2 political parties, the Democrats had not become governed by the elderly (they are not alone in this) and had not lost the thread of how to actually talk to ordinary people, the Iraq War, built on lies and operated on the basis of brutality and mass death, had not further decimated public trust in government, and, finally, 46% of the electorate had not become so desperate that they voted for a psychopath freak-show carnival barker for President, one who tried to destroy democracy (and came close to doing so).
Now … Trump appears ready to announce his Restoration Campaign to finish the job of breaking us, billionaires openly support demented thugs (who are likely to win), tens of millions of Americans believe conspiracy theories that are demonstrably moronic, inflation and violent rates of crime (in both cities and in rural America) are driving fear which is driving extremist political views even more odious and vengeful. That fear is also driving increased gun sales which is helping to drive murder rates up.
Do you know one person who doesn’t feel as if America isn’t coming apart? And the world as well? The Chinese are operating slave camps for the Uighurs, the Russians, a fully fascist kleptocracy now, are killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians, the Mexican Cartels have made that poor country ungovernable because “20 percent of America [keeps] putting this shit up their nose,”* and the devastation of climate change is having a stronger effect with each passing day.
This has been a terrible century.
But teachers also have a rule, or at least they try to hold onto it, that despair is forbidden, that children deserve a chance, and that goodness is a more powerful force than terror. I keep to that even when my heart is sinking,
*from Sicario
