My heart aches for my country. My heart aches for my world. Most importantly, my heart aches for my children. I fear, more than at any time in my lifetime that we are slipping ever closer to both civil war and world war.
As demographic changes overwhelm the status quo and economic “norms” succumb to new paradigms, the old majorities cling to their crumbling precipice and make preposterous threats to those “below” them until a boiling point is reached and the pressure cooker explodes. Every year we see dynamic shifts in socioeconomic or civil right standards that only a few short years before seemed impossible. Consider gay marriage or the removal of the confederate flag from the state house in South Carolina. Now consider a woman president or gun legislation. One seems a fait accompli while the other still engenders violent arguments on both sides of the struggle. And while the former still garners consternation from a small quarter of the public, it is the latter that causes me the most consternation. Because while the flag came down in South Carolina, and it seemed to be common sense, there is a deep seated racist backlash, coupled with a gun culture which has already lent itself to secession once, where I fear a second civil war may erupt. There has already been talk from politicians, politicians running for high national office (Rick Perry) regarding secession. This talk and the armament that these people hold is disturbing to say the least. And there is nothing well regulated about this militia.
Internationally, antisemitism, always the go-to for the disgruntled, has been resurrected in many parts of the world. And this at a time when more countries than ever have a nuclear capability. Greece’s insolvency threatens the Euro and the financial stability of the European community while Germany is left holding the financial burden. Japan has converted to an offensive capability for the first time since World War II and Russia is pushing everyone’s buttons to see just how far they can go before someone pushes back, going so far as to fly bombers off the coast of California. We’ve essentially already acted as a modern day Neville Chamberlain and conceded Crimea to Russia as a modern day Sudetenland minus the Munich Agreement by not challenging Putin. Of course, then some other country will “send troops into Russia forcing Putin to respond.” Or perhaps we’ll just skip the pretense and a President Cruz or Bush or Huckabee or some other hawk will preemptively bomb Russia leading to a retaliatory nuclear attack ending in our nuclear response and earth’s ultimate destruction. Boom boom, bang bang, lie down, you’re dead.
What ever happened to debate? To discussion? To negotiation? Why cannot today’s majority see the writing on the wall and accept that tomorrow will be different? Why cannot we accept that change is inevitable? That we must accept change or perish? Of course, if we could do that, none of these issues would be issues. Climate change would be the fact that it is we would be well underway in dealing with it instead of holding snowballs in the well of the United States Senate as if weather and climate were interchangeable terms. Gun violence prevention would be common sense rather than code words for confiscation from the paranoid few who control the political elite, racism would be an anachronism left to the dustbin of history instead of the last vestige of dominance for whites watching their majority slip into fear of retribution.
I fear for my country. I fear for my world. I fear for my children. Tell me I’m wrong.
Thoughts at Large 