Send Me Back

 

August 26, 2019

 

I have awakened in a country I do not recognize, surrounded by people I do not know.  It’s a jarring sensation, the sudden loss of something so core to one’s belief system, so innate in one’s sense of security and familiarity.  Lost is any sense that our American citizenship shields us from mercurial and vindictive strongmen, from spiraling political whims, from the willful incitement and unleashing of our more violent inclinations… and so relegated to a distant and dreamlike state is the comfort of believing you will never be forced to flee your native land.  All of that is gone. 

Certain to follow is that stale rejoinder, “If you don’t like it, leave.”  And so please (as the chant goes) send me back. 

Send me back.

Each new day in which we are forced to endure such unrelenting assaults on our intelligence, such sustained injury to on our senses of decency and shame… each new day brings me closer to wanting out.  So, send me back to that America where we all viewed one another as countrymen, not as enemies.  Send me back to that America where we all worked together, across the aisle, to tackle and to overcome our mutual obstacles.  Send me back to that America where we aspired to decency and professionalism, to a higher intellect, and to social grace.  Send me back to that America where we at least pretended to understand that racism and bigotry were considered wrong, and not to be brazenly displayed and shouted at one another in anger.  Not to be broadcast on the nightly news.  Not to be placed behind the wheel of a car, or the trigger of the Almighty and Revered AR-15.

Perhaps that America was never more than aspirational – but at least we aspired to it.

We are no longer the people we claimed to be, if we ever truly were.  Many of our fellow citizens, especially of color, have labored under no such illusions; they have never enjoyed that innate sense of belonging and trust so many of us had taken for granted.  It is impossible for a white male to fully appreciate what they have long endured, but today it is as if at least a small window has been opened to such feelings.  And the view, even from here, is terrible. 

Empathy however seems in short supply. 

Our questions, increasingly laden with bewildered sadness, are most often met with anger and dismissive ad hominem; these are the tools of modern debate for the voters who matter.  It’s been said that everyone believes he or she is the good guy.  That we must therefore acknowledge the legitimacy and altruism of both sides.  Both sides.  In the spirit of objectivity, we must always lend credence and equal weight to those who express opposing views to our own.  And so we have tried.  Did the schoolyard bully who kicked you in the teeth and stole your lunch money believe he was the good guy?  Did the adults and other children who stood idly by, or perhaps cheered him on?  Were they the good guys?  How, exactly, did they square that with the lessons those same adults pounded into all of us, together at Sunday School? 

Oh, were you not the one kicked in the teeth?  Which one were you, then?

We all have a choice to make.  Do what is right.  Silence is complicity.  That bully now occupies your highest office, surrounded by a predictably sycophantic crowd, and that’s the America to which so many of us have awakened: unfamiliar, unwelcoming, malevolent.  Having been assured our entire lives that such a vicious kid never really makes it… well, we’ve all been disabused of such farcical notions.  The bully has made it; he has come out on top, and it is an ill omen indeed, for all of us, that so many of the Sunday School teachers find joy and comfort in his ascent.

Send me back.