Grief - My First Post In a Long Time

 

GRIEF - Thoughts on 2021 America

Let the words come out, that I need to say.

Grief is no doubt ingrained in my genes and soul is the pain and panic of a mother who had me in her womb while her nation,

The Netherlands, was occupied by Nazis during what was called the 1944 hunger winter, How my parents were  able to hold hope for a child to be born, while the future looked bleak,.

And now I am beginning to understand the looks on their faces when I would ask how things like Auschwitz could have happened. This, as I watch Nazis, Racists, and Q-Anon fanatics attack the center of our government with little resistance, almost assassinating our elected leaders.

Or, more recently, being reminded again of the thousands of children at our border, some in cages, while we insult those ‘Banana Republics’ for how they treat their people. Now we have to see our allies and ‘enemies’ laugh to see the depth of hypocrisy America has revealed.

As former educator, I also grieve the lack of critical thinking skills that would allow someone the tools to separate facts from fiction, as​ we go from facts as “Fake News” and Hoaxes as fact.​

Already back in March of last year, as the Pandemic caused major disruptions in our lives, I read a book by Albert Camus titled “The Plague” While fiction, it prepared my for the bizarre mix of attitudes for how to deal with such a pandemic. I understand that during times such as this, human beings lose confidence in their leadership because they can’t satisfy the needs of huge percentages of the population.

There is global suffering, because a virus is culling the herds, causing famines, requiring restrictive legal solutions, all the while living through a virtual hell, with a frying planet and a crashing economy which is hitting the very service sector underclass the worst.

And rather than trying to lead and solve the problem, politicians start Scapegoating, the Machiavellian solution to fomenting conflict so that the lying blamer can win.

But I thought America could rise above that. Am I mistaken?(People are afraid of loosing their prosperity, whites are afraid of losing their dominance)

It causes me even more grief, because as a naturalized citizen back in 1961 with my parents, I needed to assert that I would swear on the Constitution and believe in the myth of a perfect union, with separation of powers, the rule of law, and the ability of the majority to strongly influence the direction of the nation.

Although our entire history has been about trying to live up to our words and oaths in which all humans are created equal, instead, reality has dumped the majority of Americans, be they white or black, Asian or Hispanic, into desperation while some terrorist Wannabe’s want to overturn every legal expectation we were raised to respect as Patriots.​

Let’s be honest. Except for a few million Native American, most dying from our genocides of war and disease, all other Americans, including me, are immigrants from somewhere else on earth. And every wave of immigrants came because there was a shortage of cheap labor. So where is the base for all this anti-immigrant bullshit​.?​ As the Caucasian birthrate goes down, who else but Migrant laborers will grow the food and clean our buildings, cook and work in factories. From slaves to Italians, Irish, Mexican on and on, all abused upon arrival for a few generations until they could join the middle class.

So white supremacy? You mean those British and Dutch, and Germans first arrivals are so much more valuable than the Asians that built our railroads, or the many other North Americans who have crossed our southern border, (which we stole from them) to work under conditions most of us would avoid at all cost. And don’t forget those Catholics who intruded on the Puritan Christian Mind, and then they came for the Jews and Muslims. But as long as their skin was white and pink and the eyes were blue we could still all get along. I won’t even start on the treatment of Africans abducted for slavery and still struggling with the painful history and karma that came with the treatment of their ancestors.

So back to that word, Grief, yes, grief. You feel it when a loved one is dying, You feel it even when your favorite pet needs to be euthanized. But now it means watching the very nation and system​s of governing devolve into a “Banana Republic” with a Bonanza of lying plutocrats earning record profits while the other 80% of country  are hopeless, many homeless, and children feeling no future with record suicides and domestic violence. At least grieving is acknowledging that others are suffering, and allow me to empathize with the souls of my mother and father who became parents during one of the lowest moments of the 20^th century, but managed to bring me to North America to what was then, a land of opportunity and hope.

Grieving is in many ways accepting reality, and allowing even more of the illusions and propaganda of our upbringing to dissolve and be erased from the codex or our lives. I’m sure that historians and sociologists are smirking to a degree that they’ve seen all this coming for a long time. Apparently history does teach us that history doesn’t really teach us much that is useful to our times.

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It is now January 20, as I write, and despite every effort to subvert the American electoral system, we do have a new president. It gives me a little more willingness to move on from grief, and live life with a more positive attitude. Yes United We Stand, but divided we are failing.