General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums3:00 am thinking...
Things catch up with me, yanno?
I do what I can, from day to day. Try to find ways to bear light, to oppose the darkness. Keep reminding myself that I can't fix the whole damn' world.
Most days I can find something to be grateful for. The weather. Fresh peaches ripening on my trees. A cheerful phone call from my elderly mother. Snuggles from the Feline Overlord. A bit of news, here and there, of people doing the right thing, the human thing, the loving thing.
Mostly, it's enough.
But lately, just the last few days, I wake in the darkest hours of the night, and I stare out into the shadows of the bedroom, and watch the black branches toss against the charcoal background of the window, and the shadows are full of unanswered questions.
And the biggest question is:
How are we going to make this right again?
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are committing crimes against humanity.
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are tearing apart families, locking up children, putting people in concentration camps.
Americans, neighbors, people living among us, are gathering in smug secret little social media gatherings to dehumanize people, to promote bullying and cruelty and cowardice.
Of course, most of them are "just following orders".
And I shiver in the darkness.
Those are words full of deadly weight.
How will we ever make this right?
Even if- in the unlikely event that we hold the "leaders" accountable in some way- (briefly, I fantasize seeing Stephen Miller's dead-eyed face in the dock, waiting for a judge to pronounce sentence... briefly, I fantasize the confiscation of ill-gotten fortunes and the funding of thousands of libraries and day care centers and free clinics...) -what will we do with the not-leaders?
The ones following orders. The ones "enforcing the law". The ones who righteously believe it was perfectly okay to treat human beings like trash, like a disease. In the service of their own faith in the rule of a law that privileges them as somehow right to do so.
At 3:00 am I wonder how it was in some small, quiet German city in 1948. Did neighbors look at one another with unspoken doubts? "Was that you guarding the platform to make sure none of the people being loaded in the boxcars escaped?"
How does America heal from this?
At 3:00 am, I cannot imagine.
And in the sunlight of 3:00 pm, I cannot imagine, either.
Things I considered undeniable truths of our shared communal understanding of rightness are becoming translucent, shaky, fading...
Can we ever make this right again?
sadly,
Bright
JoeOtterbein
(7,700 posts)Yep! Impeach TMFr ASAP!
jcgoldie
(11,631 posts)The problem isn't that motherfucker, he'll go down in flames one way or the other eventually, lying cheating scoundrels always do... but the real problem is the 42% of the American population according to 538 who have watched everything he's said and done for 3 years and say "Yeah I support that guy!"
JoeOtterbein
(7,700 posts)...Lock him up!
Karadeniz
(22,516 posts)Rhiannon12866
(205,326 posts)virgogal
(10,178 posts)same way that the people in the small German town did.
brer cat
(24,565 posts)I don't think we have the answer beyond the knowledge that most of us believe in what is right and just.
Atticus
(15,124 posts)cwydro
(51,308 posts)Just reading Feline Overlord made me smile for the night! Thanks!
lunatica
(53,410 posts)But in my opinion the enforcers, the ones who just follow orders are mindless followers and lacking any oversight or orders from their leaders they will settle down into a peaceful life because they will be told to by their new leaders. Theyre barely conscious, unable to think for themselves.
I worry a lot about those who have the power to give orders to the mindless. They are the consciously evil ones. I fear that waiting for the elections means many more Brown people and their children will be traumatized or die. Thats what keeps me awake.
BadgerMom
(2,771 posts)I stood in my kitchen crying with joy as I watched people gather that cold night in Chicago. I had been very concerned about Obamas electability. I recognized greatness but feared the nations racism. That night I silently chastised myself for not having had greater faith in my fellow Americans.
Election Night 2016 gave me whiplash. Was this the same country? I think it is, but I also think the powerful, not the people, became so frightened that they were losing that they decided to cheat and throw us and American values to the wolves.
I, too, am fearful. My great hope is that we overwhelm the polls and the cheaters on Election Day 2020.
ancianita
(36,055 posts)bucolic_frolic
(43,161 posts)somewhere in youtube i watched a video about the thousands of German POWs in Britain in the aftermath of World War II. The social structure, political, religious, community took these men into their homes, to welcome them, to build strength with compassion and kindness, to give skills. Most reconnected with their remaining families and friends in Germany, and eventually returned. Some remained in Britain. But in order to reach such a time period, the current situation has to be defused. It's the getting there that is uncertain, unseen. We are not without hope or resources. We are still functioning politically, we have judicial structure, the fourth and fifth estate, and civil government. We will have elections, of some kind. So there is room to reintegrate, to discuss with fellow citizens. We must meet those troubled souls with humanity and make it stick.
FakeNoose
(32,639 posts)We can't even make it right for the people that our government - in our name - were made to suffer. Maybe eventually we can make it right to somebody else, like their children or another person in their family, or whatever. But that still doesn't let us off the hook.
No more than "affirmative action" lets us off the hook for the fact of slavery.
People's lives are being ruined right now by our government - by extension that's US. They won't heal and neither will we. Somebody has to pay for this pain and suffering, somebody has to make it right. Is it going to be the ones who caused it? Not bloody likely.
TygrBright
(20,760 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)pecosbob
(7,538 posts)We don't. Tissue becomes scarified. We survive and carry the wounds we've received with us through our lives. We wall ourselves from the pain or we do not. We retreat into ourselves or we step back into the ring again and live our lives because that is what we must do.
Dan
(3,562 posts)EveHammond13
(2,855 posts)ancianita
(36,055 posts)I traveled the continent by myself for a month last year, and learned, as I seem to have to repeatedly, what a beautiful place we live in on Earth, how most people want to be friendly, humorous and helpful. The worst of us are really so few. Not even most of our neighbors. We're not really surrounded by evil or darkness. Maybe disillusioned people. Ugly truths will do that to us. But then they set us free, as Martin said.
As I'm sure you already do, I take myself out of this trouble daily, walk out, look up at stars, look at big sky, imagine big universe beyond, how tiny, fragile, we are, how short our time is, how lucky we are to know we're here.
We have to have the Obama hope that we will bring out the best in the most of us. A lot of people in this country feel like you. I'd say millions upon millions.
Shine our candles where we can, be kind. Because hurt people hurt people.
Thank you for your loving concern.
I feel like you, and I don't pretend I'm not also reminding myself when I tell you that we'll get through this, we will, though it's hard to see daylight right now.
EveHammond13
(2,855 posts)...
Anton Chekhovs short stories, just because, in dark times, its important for people in resistance to fortify themselves with beauty, if only to remind ourselves that kindness, nuance, and ambiguity are real things. In particular: the beautiful trilogy consisting of The Man in a Case, Gooseberries, and About Love.
coeur_de_lion
(3,676 posts)about Hitler. How could they ever undo the damage?
Some of it can't be undone. Some of it can.
Germany survived and now they're thriving.
We will too.
PatrickforO
(14,574 posts)that we must have catharsis to have healing.
We will have to hold the people who committed these atrocities accountable for their crimes against humanity. We will have to work to reverse Trump's assault on all decency, and restore the faith of people in institutions, and the faith of the world in America.
When the sun climbs over the horizon and blazes forth in the blue sky, we will have to learn once again to embrace human need rather than human greed. We will be compelled to begin thinking as a species, all sharing this one earth. We will have to reorganize ourselves.
As AOC says, a billionaire is a failure in policy. As Elizabeth Warren says, the primacy of the shareholder needs to be overturned so that C-Suite corporate officers will have to take workers, consumers and the environment into account on an equal footing with shareholder profits. We will have to remove the profit motive entirely from things like healthcare and prisons, where it most definitely doesn't belong.
We will learn to regard human life as sacred, far more important than profits.
We will recognize the lust for wealth and power for what they are - illusions.
We will turn ourselves around as a species, grow past adolescence into collective adulthood.
OR WE WILL BECOME EXTINCT AND THIS PLANET UNINHABITABLE.
Hekate
(90,683 posts)These are evil times