Memorial Day 2022

 

Dear you,

Memorial Day, 2022.  Driving back from a visit to Tallahassee, I stopped at a McDonald’s.  Something about road trips triggers my need for fish filet sandwiches and fries.  I indulged a few miles from the condo home.  Snacking in the car, legs dangling out the door, I looked up and saw this flag (above).  The symbol flapped in the breeze, tattered but still there.  Perfect symbolism.  We are a tattered nation, flapping around in random winds.  Such as . . .

Another mass shooting.  This time at an elementary school.  You know the numbers, the faces, the grief.  You also know the excuses.  But we all know those children died while armed men waited outside their classroom.  They waited.  The institutions of protection and defense are playing around with handbooks and protocols that are insane.  JUST GO.  DO SOMETHING.  THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE BUILT TO DO.  They waited.

This was brutal.  This was big.  We are in destructive mode, even in mundane daily encounters. For example, at a McDonald’s in Polk County, not the home of the previously mentioned tattered flag, Tianis Jones went berserk when her pre-ordered Happy Meal was incorrect.  She stormed the store and called 911.  Her rant lasted for ten minutes, “I’m at McDonalds, I’m five months pregnant . . . these people don’t know how to run a fucking McDonald’s.  I want my money.  They tried to cheat me out of my money.  I want my money!”  She then trashed the condiment station and went behind the counter to toss cups.  Before leaving, she made sure to twerk for the security camera. 

Yes, we are feeling rather tattered in ways big and small.  I hear our allies are worried we are about to collapse and making plans just in case.  Google the topic.  You will find op-ed pieces and studies like the one by Canadian political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon titled “The American polity is cracked and might collapse. Canada must prepare.”  In the editorial he claims that by “2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability including widespread civil violence.  By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.” He cites the decades long influence of outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax and voodoo-men like Rush Limbaugh as causes.  And the right-wing voodoo-men and women are “armed to the teeth” with around 400 million firearms.  Homer-Dixon agrees with other political experts that predict “under a second Trump administration, liberalism will be marginalized and right-wing Christian groups super-empowered, while violence by vigilante, paramilitary groups will rise sharply.”

Canada is, no surprise, planning ahead.  They are theorizing ways to handle millions of American refugees seeking political asylum in their sane country.  I wonder if Mexico, Costa Rica, Brazil, etc. etc. etc. are doing the same.  Picture it, millions of liberal minded Americans re-enacting the past, fleeing tyranny and despotism just like their ancestors did.  It could happen.

However, I refuse (at least for the moment) to let gun nuts, abusive twerkers and super-empowered “American Christians” run me out of this gangster nation.  On this Memorial Day, I think about all those good dreamers who wanted something better than what we are.  They don’t want me to run.  I imagine they would say:  JUST GO.  DO SOMETHING. THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE BUILT TO DO. 

I think we can do it.  We outnumber “them”.  Let’s mobilize as well as memorialize.

Forward, not back.

Joyce on Memorial Day, 2022