Sometimes I Just Can’t…
Black background with the words, “9/12, The Day After” written in white.
Today is The Day After.
I tried to write yesterday, and while hundreds of thoughts flooded my brain, I could not make myself sit in front of my computer and begin to type.
How do I make sense of what I see in the world, of what I am experiencing? How do you apply rational thought to a world gone mad? It feels like we’re all frogs sitting in the pot of slowly heating water.
I usually make a point of staying off social media on the 9/11’s. As a New Yorker who was there that day in 2001, all of the pictures, memorials, and “Do Not Forget” signs activate an anxiety inducing, heart palpitating, visceral response in my body. It’s most likely PTSD, and so I do my best at this time of year to be careful of the media I consume.
Unfortunately, on September 10th, Charlie Kirk was executed in Utah, and in Colorado, there was >another< school shooting where two people are dead and another child’s life is hanging by a thread. This is the 47th school shooting this year.
I cannot make it make sense.
Are we great yet?
The rage, the hatred, and the “othering” is part of our current national fabric. Perhaps it’s always been, but it certainly seems to have gained profound ground in the last few years. Mr. Kirk is an ironic example of it. He decried empathy, expounded at length about where women really belonged, and fully embraced bigotry and gun culture. He talked about a few deaths being the necessary cost of a “free” society so the Second Amendment could protect the rest of our other “God-given rights.” I don’t approve of what happened to Charlie Kirk, but Charlie Kirk would.
Violence is not the answer. It appears that conversation isn’t the answer either. Or rather, what passes for conversation, but is actually people screaming talking points at each other hoping for a social media-worthy “gotcha” clip. It feels like we’re so busy being right, that no one is actually listening to each other. There is no conversation.
Which actually brings up another point…if someone’s view is that you don’t have the right to exist — to live as you choose and love who you want, with sovereignty over your own body, how can you possibly talk them into changing their mind? What are the words that will make someone affirm someone else’s humanity?
I don’t know. I don’t know how to do that.
In texting with an acquaintance this morning, we came to the conclusion that the veil of decency in America was dropped years ago on the altar of Trump. With him came multitudes of lies, corruption, and criminality. Once you’re okay with or excuse a leader who is a serial sexual assaulter; someone who mocks the handicapped, veterans, women, your fellow Americans; a person who is an adjudicated grifter, we have no place left to go but down. And we are.
Decency is now a quaint idea. Old fashioned, and irrelevant to current times. I wish it were different. I believe in being a decent human. I believe in kindness. I don’t believe that religion or a belief in any particular God makes anyone a better or worse person, because right and wrong are not religious ideals.
I wish I’d never heard the words, “far right,” “liberal left,” “extremist,” “school shooter,” “radicalized,” “Trump,” “fake news,” “gun lobby,” or “Christian Nationalist,” but I have, and now they’re a part of our collective lexicon, and it sucks.
In 2001, the enemy was “out there.” Now, the call is coming from inside the house.
LB Adams is the CEO of Practical Dramatics, LLC. She is a communication facilitator & public speaking coach, author and keynote speaker.