Monday, April 2, 2018

Anatevka On My Mind

Pesach ain't easy for me. Never mind that I turn my kitchen inside-out and cook into insensibility. Never mind the big Rubbermaid bins and the moving of entire sets of dishes, pots, and pans. None of that comes close to the emotional upheaval that is Passover. 

Over the course of the last nine years, I've lived with the constant companionship of the angel of death. I was the caretaker, the overseer, the one who walked as far as I could before the malach ha'mavet took over. There was a sense of finality during those years, knowing about the inevitable, and being completely powerless to change any of it. Never mind I ran up against cancer in my own body. In so many ways, it was really an out-of-body experience; probably because that was the only way I could deal with it. So I did.

That was then. 

I don't pay much attention to the angel of death these days. We're on reasonably friendly terms. The malach ha'mavet ignores me, I ignore the malach ha'mavet. There's a certain equanimity achieved. And I can live with that. 

This is now. 

The weird part of now? I am less optimistic about the future than I was even 2 years ago when Mom died right before Pesach. I believed I'd survived it all, was still standing, and forward motion was the order of the day.

I'm not so sure We, the People are moving forward.

These days, I watch as much of what We, the People were striving for as a nation being dismembered, disassembled, and discarded. Regulations for clean air and water are being repealed. Schools are being further reduced to educational rubble with funding cuts. Health care availability that had taken such a great step forward is disintegrating. And families are being destroyed by unnecessary, mean, and morally reprehensible deportations. 

The establishment of Sinclair Broadcasting as some sort of standard is terrifying, and the lock step announcement its anchors were compelled to read is Orwellian:




Between the new attempts to parlez with the North Koreans and White House invitation for Putin, I keep thinking I've crossed into some alternative universe. None of this can be real....and you know how I know that? Because lots of people are supporting this lunacy and We, the People in the regular universe are saner than that.

Or are we?

This is no longer the country that inspired Emma Lazarus to write:


"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

America was a great idea 242 years. I'm no longer convinced this country has a future I will recognize; if we keep heading in this direction, the road will have detention centers and internment camps on either side. Concentration camps and crematoria cannot be far behind. 

Meanwhile, ANATEVKA is my new ear-worm.


The Wifely Person' Tip o'the Week

Maybe We, the People, should pack up Lady Liberty 
and ship her someplace where 
she would be more welcome than she is here. 

4 comments:

  1. A wise man once said, "There is nothing wrong with America, that can't be fixed with what is right with America."

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    1. I like that quote. Another - and different - wise man also said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” And the first, and most powerful, something we can do is vote the first wave of bastards out in the mid-terms.

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  2. While you are ranting about hypothetical detention centers and internment camps, I'm more concerned about life on the streets today. From the current WashPost:

    "American police have shot and killed at least 3234 people since January 2015, according to The Washington Post’s database tracking such shootings. Black victims account for about 23 percent those shot and killed, and about 36 percent of the 222 unarmed people who have been shot and killed.

    In at least a quarter of all fatal police shootings since January 2015, the person shot and killed is believed to have been in the midst of a mental or emotional health crisis at the time of the shooting, according to an analysis by The Post.

    At least 289 people have been shot and killed so far in 2018, one in five of whom were in the midst of a mental or emotional health crisis at the time of the shooting, according to The Post database."

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  3. Read your post of March 26 and be inspired. The young people will save us - again - using the tools we have given them: the vote, the constitution and the courts. We've moved as a country from peril to peril and have always survived - and we will again. Remember the Civil War, Jim Crow and the St. Louis. We've been through much worse than what we see now. The idea of America remains strong, at least as strong as it was when Emma Lazarus wrote the piece you quote.

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