Time marches on. It heals all wounds — and wounds all heels.
But the one thing time does not do is go backward.
Right after we’ve finished with our fa-la-las and put our decorations away (assuming we ever got around to putting them up in the first place), we’re going to be turning our attentions to the new year.
This year of news has been one long bad reality show — more so than at any other time in history. Because we get so much of our news through social media, we have slowly learned to take in only what we agree with. We’ve become a nation that only eats our desserts and eschews our vegetables — or anything else we find disagreeable.
But, as they say, sunlight is a great disinfectant, so let’s bask in a little sun, throw a little shade, and examine the hard lessons we’ve tried hard not to learn:
Our youth got smarter, even as our leadership got dumber.
Maybe it was because they’ve had to. Thoughts and prayers weren’t cutting it for the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., when the students and staff were victimized by another mass shooting on Valentine’s Day. While our country’s political leaders sat on their hands mouthing the careful platitudes that wouldn’t offend their NRA donors and puppet masters, these teenagers and their parents turned their grief into activism. The kids who grew up with social media as their norm, organized and got others to march, speak out, and vote with them. They used their privilege to highlight not just their own tragedy, but the gun violence that befalls the inner city as well. Some of them became so well known and outspoken they were trolled by conservative pundits, who only showed themselves to be the ones unarmed in a battle of wits.
Have we gotten meaner, or just more aware of it? Bullying has refused to take a backseat. The upside is now the weakness and insecurity behind all bullying is exposed for all to see.
In the last two years we’ve gone from Hope and Change to Nope and Strange.
Nope to welcoming brown people who are coming here looking for a better life. Nope to working to reverse the effects of climate change, something that will affect every person on the planet eventually. Nope to caring about anyone else other than how it affects you, and only you. And nope to leadership.
Nope to making the federal minimum wage a living wage, ignoring the argument that one shouldn’t be working full time, or longer, and still living in poverty.
Also nope to complete sentences and thoughts, reading comprehension, self-awareness, ideas and policies more complicated and nuanced than 280 characters will allow, and a nope with a capital N to anything remotely connected to truth.
But some people are winning, right? Our leaders have said yes to plenty of things — yes to white supremacy coming out of the shadows; yes to polluting our air and water again; yes to selling off protected lands to corporate interests; yes to giving more money to the one percenters who don’t need it and won’t use it to benefit lower and middle-income workers despite the many tries (and fails) of trickle-down economics; yes to higher costs of housing and college, saddling the next generation with so much debt, they will be forced to extend adolescent-style living — back home with their parents, or with roommates. And yes to increased fear and anxiety for everyone, even those of you who voted for a reality television character, who never met a corporate bankruptcy he didn’t like — and decided to run a country the same way he managed his many failed businesses.
And yes to increased cruelty and inhumanity. While the whole world watched, and the enablers made excuses, this administration separated asylum-seeking families and put children in dog cages. It was only the outcry that paused the practice. Guess what? There are still children who have no idea where their parents are (some were deported without them) and are being held captive. The news cycle turned to other cruelties and the most heinous one continued out of sight — and out of mind.
But time does march on.
We move forward, not backward. We can make America hate again, but we can’t make it 1950s again. And please understand that those ’50s weren’t great for everyone.
Granted, we live in a blue state, but there’s plenty of red anxiety here too. Plenty of people want to build a wall to keep people out, because they don’t look like them, although they won’t admit that, even to themselves. Being called a racist is actually worse for many people than being a racist, supporting racist policies, and thinking racist thoughts.
Sunshine is your best disinfectant.
We still need to examine our anxiety and discomfort around race and fear of the other. It’s not easy to be introspective and when you want to think of yourself as a good person, it’s even harder. But when you think of others getting what they didn’t deserve, or earn because you were here first, or your ancestors came to this country the “right way,” take a step back from your defensive feelings and examine where they are coming from. The first Europeans who came to this country didn’t come any “right way.” They came, they strong-armed and invaded, colonized, then moved natives off their land and made up rules for everyone else. If someone came into your apartment or home today, claimed it for their homeland and then pushed you out, how would you feel?
And maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s the fear of karma that keeps people hoping for a wall — keeping people from coming here to do what their ancestors did to the people who were here first.
This is the season we recognize and celebrate the birth of a child who was a stranger in a strange land, and an unwed young woman who was homeless, at least temporarily, when she brought forth her child in a manger among farm animals — so the story goes.
We hold this story in reverence, while simultaneously turning our backs on little children in cages, families seeking asylum from violence, our own school children who are being traumatized by lockdown and active shooter drills — something that was unheard of when we were in school.
We have a horrible disconnect from what we say, what we believe, and how we act. We have normalized the cruel, the bizarre, the bully. This month we will ignore reality and say empty words about peace on earth and goodwill to all.
Next month we either can try to make it happen, or stay on the rocky road we’re traveling. Either way, time marches on.
