3:00 am thinking... [View all]
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
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