I’ve been with someone for many years, and we’ve had a big falling out. One of those where things are said that can’t be un-said, or un-heard. The kind of falling out that makes me think: If that’s how you feel, we don’t have anything to talk about.
It’s both not that bad, and worse. I’ve fallen out with my country.
I grew up in the Jim Crow South, so nothing said today by the proud boys or men toting assault weapons as proxies for burning crosses is new to me. I heard it all in the fifties and sixties in redneck bars and the men’s grill at the country club. It’s just that until the last few years I had thought that kind of racist, misogynist thinking was, if not completely behind us, at least receding in the rear-view mirror.
Now it’s painfully obvious that it has not been receding at all. Like locusts, it has merely been waiting in the dark earth for blood and soil to call it back to the surface. Its terrifying husks of rage are swarming again.
There’s little chance of reconciliation. No one is listening. We’re way past that. I live in coastal Northern California, which is something like living in blue Stepford. It’s fine, but I feel isolated and confined.
I don’t like the tribal solution: I stick with my peeps, you with yours. That just makes things worse. And I can’t look away from the hatred. I see it on faces in the news every day.
I have no illusion that there is a paradise of sensible thinking and tolerance to which I can relocate. The hatred is everywhere, not just in our country. Something has happened to us, as a people, and it’s ugly.
Climate change and the deprivations it will bring, is bringing, are only going to make it uglier. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to march. I just want us to settle down and live our lives with respect and empathy for others.
Maybe the current election will bring kinder people back into government. Maybe they can help us learn to care about one another again. Maybe they can help us heal.
If not, I’m afraid this relationship is over.
