Ownership of Our Shared Responsibility

Today is the first of July.  Today is also the first day of the second half of 2020, which feels as if it has lasted forever already but has - in fact - lasted but six months.  Today is as good a day as any for we the people of these United States to forge a way forward, together. 

Ours is a divided nation.  Nineteen years ago, with the predictably shameful behavior directed towards Arab-Americans (or anyone who kind of, sort of resembled an Arab-American) serving as the ugly exception to the rule, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, labels stopped being used in everyday conversation.  People were not "snowflakes" or "right-wingers", "liberals" or "conservatives", "Democrats" or "Republicans".  We were Americans.  

To be sure, many of us were afraid and many of us were angry.  But many more of us, appreciating the incalculable loss felt by thousands of American families, a loss that cut across social, economic, geographic, religious, racial, and cultural lines, and appreciating that that loss could have been our loss but for the grace of God responded to their losses with empathy and with compassion.  For a brief moment in time, we stopped banging on each other's innate differences and, instead, focused on each other's commonality.  We looked into each other and not merely at each other.  We looked out for each other.  

The relentless sloganeering notwithstanding (If I hear Bill Ritter on WABC-7 in New York City (who I like a great deal as a news anchor) exclaim "We Are All In This Together!" one more time on the six o'clock news, I am going to scream until I pass out), the national nightmare that is America's protracted COVID-19 crisis has revealed how broken we are.  Science be damned.  If real men do not eat quiche, then they sure as fuck do not wear face coverings in public, irrespective of what apolitical, learned minds such as Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci tell them.  Once upon a generation or three ago, Americans of all ages, colors, and creeds prioritized selflessness and working for a greater good over individual pleasures or comforts...

...a mere paucity of which traits have survived to present day apparently.  

We have weaponized ignorance. The consequence of which, of course, has been the devaluation (or "defunding" if you prefer) of being informed.  We live in an age where good, solid, verifiable information on practically every subject about which you could ever pose a question is available at the click of a button or the posing of a question to Alexa or Siri.  The ability to dive deep into a particular subject has never been easier. Yet, inspired perhaps by a President who wears his avoidance of reading as if it is a battlefield honor too many of us not only refuse to do so but display open and visible contempt for those who do.  

To borrow a line from the great American philosopher and baseball player, Lawrence Peter Berra, here in these United States, it is starting to get late early.  Tomorrow is not guaranteed.  That is something it would behoove each of us to remember. 

Before it is too late to do a fucking thing about it. 

  

-AK