I guess Lincoln must have known how fragile the union was.
Being born many years later and enjoying the period
after World War II when many countries got their
#$%& together and realized cooperation and good will
are much better tools for prosperity than greed, chaos and wars;
I lived in a bubble of confidence that my country
was promoting decency and striving toward actual justice.
When Obama was elected, TWICE, I rejoiced
in the naive belief that equality was truly coming to fruition.
Do I feel foolish? No! I feel betrayed and grief stricken.
The stark contrast of decorous graves
in a city built by the enslaved is a fitting description.
When I was in grade school, I found a copy of Gone With the Wind
hidden in my grandparent's "secret" closet. I was transfixed.
I had no idea, until many years later, that it was a propaganda tool,
written from the perspective of a 26 year old, Smith college educated,
white woman from Atlanta living during the Civil War Era.
I don't believe she wrote it as a propaganda tool,
I suspect she wrote it as an understandably biased,
sincere report of her impressions and imagination.
(But what do I know?)
It was used as a propaganda too and I'm chagrined
at how deeply I fell for it as another white American woman.
Is it cruelty and meanness that leads people to believe
the sort of subterfuge handed out in propaganda?
Could it be sincere and well-meaning based on
their lived experience and how they are experiencing their lives
and what they're hearing in their houses of worship and among their peers?
What does it take for people to wake up to decency and equality?
A lack of fear that they will lose something?
That their way of life and in particular, their way of seeing their status
will be harmed by someone they've been programmed to look down on,
is a threat to them personally?
This excerpt from Luterman combined with
the reckoning I'm getting from our current day world
has activated many questions. Too many for this blog
so I will leave this here.
Still more...if you can bear it!!
Approximately a week ago, I had selected this poem for today.
When I returned to the file to place today's commentary,
I was reminded of writing what follows back then.
Clearly, this has taken hold of me with a strong grip!
"The lump in my throat is giant, with clouds of tears gathering behind my eyes
as I read this and feel the sorrowful truth of it sink into my cells.
Grief over “the war-torn waste of generations ...a miasma rising
from cemented-over swamps...of this city, built by the enslaved;
is here in my body, heavy and razor-edged,
as I witness the damage from unhealed wounds infecting still more generations,
not to mention our planet, with its poison.
What will it take to heal us? Is there a vaccine to protect against cruelty?
May my every thought, word and actions contribute to the antidote to this toxin."
Note: Clearly, something is happening here, I'm meant to pay attention to.
It's reached past even my faltering memory!!
(Many thanks to Alison Luterman and to Heather Cox Richardson
for educating me past my trance of denial.)
