In the blackness and vastness of the universe, our earthly spats and wars and human achievements and shortcomings and senses of beauty and all the absurdities we deal with are just whispers into the void. It all quite possibly falls on deaf ears.
From the vacuum of space, the beautiful blue marble might be a sight to behold, but from this side of the sliver of atmosphere that keeps us alive, there is much strife and ugliness. From out there, it’s all quiet beauty. From in here, it’s a freaking cacophony.
It’s not that it is difficult to find beauty and feel awe here on the surface of the only planet known to contain what we call life. It’s just that it feels like we’re heading toward a moment, toward an inexorable, premature culmination of some sort. Evolution has brought us to a time and place that would most likely be unfamiliar to our ancestors. And yet, evolution hasn’t brought us far enough.
We may be at the top of the food chain, we may have a spectacular brain, but it seems apparent that many are stalled at that stage of using their heads for nothing more than the proverbial hat rack. In the space where God exists, there might be love for everyone and everything, but in that space where reason and rationality rule and God seems more like a construct, exceptions apply. Judgement is passed, and a different reality competes for our attention.
The longer we live, the more likely it becomes that we’ll have a wake-up call. I suppose this could be attributed to maturation, to an accumulation of knowledge and experience– its own form of evolution– where perceptions change and a certain clarity emerges. We finally leave the womb and begin to breathe on our own. We are allowed to see the world as it is, and not as what others wish us to see. Cynicism may be part of this mix.
What I see is at once astounding and disheartening. Billions of divergent paths, and yet a movement in one direction. We are self-seeking beings told to care for others. We are products of our immediate environment, born into love and nurture or disregard and neglect, with parents who love us or who are indifferent, or for whom our existence is a bane to theirs. Depending on our country of origin and its form of government, we are products of certain histories and teachings, implored to follow the rules and think for ourselves.
The experiences of our early and formative years follow us into adulthood. We make course corrections as we are able, or we don’t. We take on the best and worst of those who are around us the most. At some point we attain a certain self-awareness. We learn to read, we observe and listen, and we start measuring and comparing things, things we’ve learned, things we’ve been taught, ideas that hatch in our heads. We make assessments, we decide what to keep and what to jettison. We interact, or we don’t. We engage, or we retreat.
I have no idea where this post is going, except to offer that earthly life is a messy thing. Our better angels are in near constant battle with the devil on the other shoulder. We catch regular glimpses of the ongoing titanic conflicts that rage among and within us. We may yearn for affirmation– that the way we see things is the right way, and all those others have it wrong.
Ah… so this is where I’m going.
What has transpired since Donald Trump emerged from his lair, and to some degree has always existed, is troubling me to an extent that I couldn’t foresee 9 years ago. The depth of Trump’s depravity, loosed on us all– even on those who still think he’s some sort of savior– conjures up a periodic need to grapple with this messiness, to try to understand what looks to me like blindness and self-seeking gone horribly awry. It seems our reality may be that, as much as we might like to skate through life unscathed, counting on some sort of self-correcting equilibrium or just a law of averages, we often get our turn at needing to stand our ground, needing to speak up and call out the bullshit we know to exist.
Relativism can buy us only so much time, until a turning point emerges. Not everyone can be right, at least as being right informs our continued existence as a nation born of lofty ideals and a daring vision. Whether or not we currently find ourselves returned to 1861, or the 1930s, we once again face a certain reckoning at the hands of people who, for a variety of reasons including a lust for power, have decided that government of the people, by the people, and for the people doesn’t work anymore. It’s too quaint a notion, and too hard.
So we have to deal with the crackpots, the wannabe despots, the wayward visionaries who are absolutely certain of the rightness of their cause, if they even know what that cause is. In the aftermath of the hush money verdict, almost the entire Republican party, along with the enablers at Fox News and the rest of their ilk, are doing their damnedest to stir up “righteous” anger and offense, while the folks at MSNBC and elsewhere are trying, with varying degrees of success, to contain their glee, trying to take the high road but predictably elated with the outcome, and intent on defending it.
Lady justice with the blindfold represents the ideal, and something our court system emulates with varying degrees of success. I’m with the folks at the peacock network and anyone else who’s defending the verdict and the process. Because I’m not the only who knows a skunk when I see one, or who stands clear of a pile of horseshit and calls it what it is. People are always happy or unhappy with verdicts, depending on where they sit.
Donald Trump stinks to high heavens, and has thumbed his nose at the rule of law for most of his life. Those who keep summoning contrived offense on his behalf, who keep defending him despite who and what he keeps proving himself to be– a deeply flawed and damaged human being unworthy of the office he seeks– need to stop the act. They’ve proven they’re great at spin and feigning righteous indignation, but need to find another horse to ride. They’ve ridden this one hard and put him up wet so many times that he– and they– don’t know which way is up anymore.
3 Cents' 