A contradictory heading.
How can both be true? How can a
year be and not be, or should not have been but is?
The answer lies in one’s perspective, and as I am now
entering the outfield of old age, the game has been called. It’s a matter of simple math. Removing a year from your life when you’re
approaching 80 represents a huge fraction of one’s remaining life. So, waiting for COVID-19 to abate or to be
solved is tantamount to a kind of purgatory, a state of being between life and
death.
Purgatory implies some kind of judgement. I’d say we are among the fortunate who can
afford to stay in our house, surrounded by our books and streaming choices of
theatre and music, and for me my
precious piano, Judgement day is looking
up, if you believe in religious fabrication.
I don’t; and have always argued that we make our own heaven or hell
right here and now.
At first we hung onto every word of Dr. Fauci, for
guidance and for any hopeful signs of a vaccination. Any good news would release us, the most
vulnerable, from being confined to our home.
Instead, what we feared, a therapeutic and better yet, a vaccination,
will be a long time coming.
Ok, “normal” life will continue without us. As “reopening” occurred, we watched boats
pass by our house, their Trump flags flying, celebrating reverence for their
King releasing them from bondage, going right back to their previous ways of ignoring
social distancing, just making it more dangerous for the rest of us, but, hey,
it’s their “freedom” not ours.
Until the thunderbolt of America’s original sin struck in
Minneapolis of all places. Racism, lack
of opportunity, income inequality, white privilege, police violence, and the
message that black lives really don’t matter, came crashing down on the
country’s collective conscience with the murder of just one black person, George
Floyd, by an imperious white policeman, Derek Chauvin, filmed for all the world
to see. The country burst into the same
Chicago flames as in 1968 after Martin Luther King’s assassination. Then too we had another elephant in the room,
the Vietnam War which had fomented its own trauma. There were also the Watts Riots of 1965,
involving the police and a black man and they foreshadowed the 1992 LA riots
which were sparked by the arrest and beating of Rodney King, all of which was
filmed. Cell phones were not around
then, but a TV cameraman captured the gruesome details.
But the killing of the seemingly gentle giant George
Floyd was different. It came soon after
filmed killings either by police or white vigilantes of other blacks and, over
the past years hundreds, more like them.
It came after Dylann Roof’s mass murder in a Charleston black Baptist
Church. It came immediately after the
filmed confrontation of a black man who was bird watching in Central Park and a
white woman who felt entitled to call the police when he asked her to put her
dog on a leash in an area where birds were protected. But she chose to turn the call into a racial
one, saying "I'm taking a picture and calling the cops, I'm going to tell
them there's an African American man threatening my life." It was an open invitation for the police to
take action which would not have been justified. The mere fact that he was black gave the
woman a sense of entitlement, the power, to make such a call. Had she had a gun and was in Florida she
might have shot him and been vindicated under its racially charged “Stand Your
Ground” law. It reveals the basis of a
problem which has existed forever in this country, remaining unaddressed.
We all know the systemic basis for it all and this
country’s failure to do anything while propping up the stock market to benefit
the few is a sin.
Its failure to
address gun control is just another, but related, sin.
Its failure to invest in education as part of the long term
solution overarches the entire topic.
Hopelessness breeds a certain kind of despair which can
burst into flames when a match is thrown into the kindling. But this is no mere match, as the video of
the white policeman shows him kneeling on the neck of this poor man, suffocating
the life out of him, the half shit grin knowing he was being filmed, the casual
hand in the pocket. It had the
characteristics of the hunter proudly dominating his dead prey. Like the ones of the Trump brothers grinning
over their dead leopard, elk, elephant, or endangered sheep, the same shit
eating grin of domination by gun or authority.
Many knew that with the election of a sociopathic
reality TV star a Trumpocalypse might result. Being so close to the election now, I was
starting to think we might escape with merely part of our world being dismantled
but COVID-19 gave him another way to pursue his egotistical ends, forcing
himself into our homes each day with frequent preposterous claims about the
virus, not giving the experts the floor, and refusing to wear a mask although
that is the guidelines our health experts advocated. Nothing applies to him and it makes him look
weak. One must wonder how he felt when
he had to be taken to the bunker in the White House because of protests.
Well, he decided, I’ll look strong by clearing a way to
St. John's Church across the park from the White House to pose for photos
holding up a bible, as if he has spent his Sundays in church. If this photo op meant pepper spraying
protestors or using rubber bullets against them, so be it. He wants us to know he’s a tough guy. It invites commentary, the absurdity and the
arrogance of it all and it would be funny if it were not so tragic, that that
is the action our “President” thinks meaningful in light of this wake up moment
in our history.
It is more than ironic that George Floyd’s brother,
Terrence Floyd, was the one who took the conciliatory Presidential fork in the
road, exhorting the crowds to not turn to violence and looting, urging protests
in a peaceful way to honor his brother.
He also asked that the crowds turn to the voting booth to make their
voices heard. "Educate yourselves.
Don't wait for somebody else to tell you who's who, educate yourself and know
who you're voting for. That's how we're going to help. It's a lot of us! ...
Let's switch it up and do this peacefully.''
Trump, meanwhile took the low road, urging the Governors
of those States to “dominate” with force, warning that if they didn’t do it,
he’d call up the military. He said
"I’m your president of law and order.''
It would have been an ideal opportunity for a normal
President of the United States to show empathy, compassion, urging Congress to
bring a bill to his desk to ensure a massive investment in education and in the
short term economic relief for the most poverty stricken and unemployed. But we know that this President was not born
with an empathic bone in his body, only bone spurs.
He is like CV19 itself.
It knows nothing about empathy and only “thinks” of its own existence by
replicating through infecting others. It
is not an “equal opportunity” infector, more seriously impacting those without
access to good diets and medical care as well us elderly. It ruins lives. It kills.
And once a large number of unprotected citizens are infected, it leads
to disastrous societal and economic consequences. Trump’s strong-arm behavior only
exacerbates an already incendiary situation.
I fear it will worsen.
Yet, this is our moment to stand in solidarity with all
people of color, to work towards an election of bringing people to Congress who
will work together to find solutions to the systemic problem of racism and
income disparity and full employment for all.
If we can afford to go to Mars, we can afford to do this. And it is time
to remove the virulent President. Indeed,
make this a year of reckoning, one that might have been a year that never was,
but now can count for something constructive.
