“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.”
― Elie Wiesel
A brief one today, because I have more than I can say grace over today. And, frankly, I'm in sort of a shitty mood.
My morning began with a call from a woman who'd let her house get foreclosed and now was seeking my advice on a technicality she thought she'd identified that would save the property. I read the documents, and told her she was screwed and should pay the new owner or move. And folks who've lost their homes to foreclosure don't pay their bills generally, so that one's on the house.
There have been several calls since then, and another in a few minutes. No rest for the wicked.
Poor P has been putting up with my sour mood for a couple days now. What's the source? Maybe my mother's senescence; she inadvertently called me last night and hung up as I was crawling along on Highway 77 on my way back from a meeting. When I called back, first she couldn't figure out how to place the phone's microphone near her mouth, a big deal with her now-faint voice. Then the aphasia rendered her speechless. "Things are fine here, Mom. Love you. Talk to you this weekend." It's always the same now. The last substantive conversation between us has come and gone.
Or maybe it's the Republican coup at New College, an institution I grew to love and admire as two sons, a good friend's son, and a son in all but DNA attended there. Last night the governor's new board arrived for their initial meeting, and immediately fired the school's president and replaced her with a right wing toadie. The outgoing president was in tears. The crowd shouted that she should fight, that we must resist. They're right. Elie Wiesel was right.
And that Wiesel quote above was on a teacher's wall in a school in Pennsylvania, but taken down on orders from the administrators who feared expressing an opinion that stands up for the oppressed might violate district policy in these reactionary times. Ultimately they relented and the display returned, but this gives one a sense of the moment.
Books aren't being burned, but they're being banned. A teacher that shows a student in Florida a book that's not on the governor's list commits a third-degree felony. They're passing a "constitutional carry" law that will allowed concealed carry of a pistol with no permit in Florida. The cure for gun violence? More guns, of course. I wonder why they don't apply the same logic to drug addiction.
We have a voting fraud secret police that appears to have no purpose but to harass black folks who try to exercise their constitutional rights at the ballot box. We have one of my diabolical neighbors as the governor's quack advisor on "freedom" for doctors to misinform their patients, and who's merrily suggesting that Dr. Fauci should be shot. How is that not against the law?
That's one of my other neighbors in the photo on the left, now the state's Chief Financial Officer and apparently onboard with all of this. We were Kiwanis Club members together in a better, vanished time. I used to like him.
Abortion is basically illegal. But hey, if you don't have a uterus, it's not a problem for you and me, eh? But they'll come for you later. That's how it always works.
So yeah, I'm angry and depressed at this pathetic moment in history. I said four years ago that I didn't want to spend the last good years of my life picking through wreckage after the storm, but this is much worse. There's nowhere safe, and my ability to earn a living is here. And this situation will likely last for the rest of my time on this planet.
But I need to remind myself it's not forever, that these folks have already lost. The revanchist triumph is a temporary one, which seems always to be the case. Folks are turning their backs en masse on organized religion, a development I once viewed with horror but now recognize if it's a choice between secularism and what evangelical Christianity has become, we're better off with the former. So the whole Christian nationalism thing is a dead letter.
And birthrates among white folks have fallen off a cliff, so the ancestors of the people who will occupy this geographic space in the next century are now being born in Ghana and Guatemala. My neighbors can elect politicians who outlaw diversity training and make it a felony to teach black history, but there's no way to legislate away the demographic reality of what's coming, what's already happening in fact.
So this insane spasm of hate and white evangelical ascendency amounts to trying to sweep back the tide with a broom. It'll end. But so will I, likely long before the majority in this country wrests back control of the ship.
In the meantime, I need to be there for P, and not let this ruin what we have left. "Don't let the bastards get you down," my grandfather regularly admonished. Wise words.
But in the meantime, we can't be silent any longer. Besides being cowardly, never speaking back to the absurdity of the current political moment just leads to depression. Anger feels better.
"They don't gotta burn the books they just remove 'em..." - Rage Against the Machine 1996