August 15, 2017 by lonbud

This Is Not My Beautiful House 2

I suspected, long before the electors of the Electoral College failed to exercise their constitutional right to spare We the People from our own ignorance and myopia, Donald J. Drumpf would be a Presidential disaster of historic proportions.

Back in January, even as the pomp and circumstance of our federal government’s longstanding ode to the peaceful transfer of power played out to a thin(ish) crowd in the nation’s capitol, I felt confident the Grifter-in-Chief would soon enough be exposed for his amorality and utter lack of fitness to fulfill the requisites of office.

I was content (enough) to stock up on popcorn and cannabis oil and watch the episodic implosion of the worst character nearly a quarter millennium had ever cast to play the role.

I ignored the subtitle of this very blog: Silence is not an option.

No more.

Have we reached a turning point?

Are we witnessing now, finally, the pivot at which our Founding Fathers’ vaunted prescience might enable the institutions of our fabled Republic to ensure the United States of America may remain the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave?

It has been said Hope Springs Eternal.

I recently got into a respectful dialogue with a friend who happens to have voted for the current occupant, who takes the position that the violence we are witnessing in America today is equally blamed on extremists at either end of the ideological divide, and who, like me, would prefer cooler heads prevail in this fraught moment.

We both averred our fear for the world our children will inherit, yet neither of us seemed willing to loosen our grip on the worldview that informs our perspective.

Thus, the table seems set for Civil War.

It’s an oxymoron, of course. There has never been a civil war. Innocents, otherwise known as collateral damage, always die. Nothing is ever, truly, resolved. Anger and hatred and revenge impulses are, for a time, stuffed – until a blowoff opportunity presents itself.

This pattern is indelibly etched into the history, perhaps into the DNA of the human species. Americans and America are not exceptional in this, nor in any other regard.

Another friend wonders whether it’s OK to panic NOW, finally.

I suggested to her that now, especially, we must remain calm and methodical in our resistance to the abominations emanating from the White House, the Executive Branch, and the Department of Justice. She told me she’d rather be methodically packing (a suitcase, not a gun, for those wondering), like it’s 1939.

I disagree.

In our hour of darkness, in our time of need, we must take a stand. It’s time to bend the long arc of justice into a more acute orientation. We do this by voicing our fears. By voicing our pain. By articulating our connection to one another and to the planet and to the universe.

Climate change is a growing shadow on the spectre of human existence. But seriously, if we don’t get our own house in order, we may burn the whole thing down before Mother Nature has a chance to teach us a lesson.