And it’s morning
And another sunrise bleeds across the sky.
And it’s beautiul, and terrible
Like the farewell in your eyes.
Now I’m supposed to just let you go,
Though how I’ll do it, I don’t know
But change is just the turning of life’s tide.
I don’t know why the tide goes out.
They tell me that it’s gravity and the moon.
I don’t know why you have to go-
I only know
You’re leaving me much too soon.
We started hearing it the day after Barack Obama’s election and now the foot-stomping tantrum chorus of entitled bullies threatening to take their ball and go home if the rest of us don’t agree to play by their rules is growing again.
“This is not my America” you lament! “This is no longer the same country I know and love!”
Huh. You know what- you may be right.
Because frankly, if you demand that America in the 21st century should function under the same assumptions and with the same values and the same entitled majority that America did in the 18th century- then no, this actually isn’t your America any more.
If you believe that “Freedom of religion” means that you have the right, based on your religious beliefs, to make decisions about health care, family planning, equal rights, employment and education for people who do not even share your religion- you’re in the wrong place.
If you think you have the right to say who other people can love, this isn’t that place.
If you believe that bullying and abuse is ok as long as you do it for Jesus, and that kids are better off in orphanages than with gay parents, that its OK for you to demand to inspect our daughters’ genitals before you let them use the bathroom but it’s “radical” for us to tell you to wear a mask to save lives and that rape shouldn’t be an ‘excuse’ for an abortion because hey, some girls rape easy… this is not your America.
If you believe that the working poor, pensioners and veterans in America just want ‘free stuff’ but when billionaires demand bigger income tax cuts its just for the good of the nation- no, this is not your America.
If you believe that it was wrong for your Irish and Polish immigrant grandparents to be called ‘dirty’ and ‘lazy’and ‘stupid’ 100 years ago but its ok to assume that Latino immigrants are all criminals carrying diseases, or that middle eastern immigrants are all terrorists (while you strut around the grocery store with a gun strapped to your back)… I don’t think so.
If you think that the reason there are so many single parent families today is a lack of shame attached to the mothers, and that the proper way to encourage better attendance at school is to take away the food stamps from the families of kids who miss school… you don’t understand what that “beacon of hope” thing is supposed to mean.
If the idea of massive walls and internment camps for people who are different seems like a good thing- but a gun license or a vaccination for you is government oppression… you probably would be happier somewhere else.
If you think that it is communism for a government that calls itself “By the people and For the people” to help take care OF the people and that “promote the general welfare” shouldn’t include making sure citizens don’t die from treatable illness just because they can’t afford health insurance, you may have taken a wrong turn.
If you believe that black people only vote for a black man because of race but white people never vote for a white guy just because of his race… if you defend the monuments of men who took up arms and committed slaughter to tear this country apart as your “heritage” but outlaw teaching the heritage of the people held in chains… if you believe that a 90 year old veteran who has been voting for 50 years should be denied a ballot because he no longer has a driver’s license… then it’s really not your America any more.
If you believe that having your candidate criticized is a witch-hunt but it’s ok for you to call the other candidate a pedophile and the Antichrist then yeah, you may be in the wrong place.
If you think that a nation which you boast is the Leader of the Free World and The Greatest Nation on Earth should ignore the needs of the rest of the earth, and even the needs to its own people, the you don’t understand the meaning of leadershipn.
And if you believe that it’s not possible for your candidate to lose an election unless the “urban” people cheat… by voting… if you believe that an acceptable way to win is to try to stop as many of those people as possible from voting: that “bipartisan’ means that all those other people must do things your way even when you are in the minority and that the “United” part of “United States of America” only applies when your party is running the show… then you fundamentally don’t understand what America- what a democratic republic- is.
Our Founding Fathers did not create a nation where groups of citizens can just ‘opt out’ when things aren’t being done their way, or where a bunch of you whining that you want to leave will make us turn our backs on our core principles in order to appease and accommodate you.
It’s not a place where beginning a sentence with “I’m not a racist but’ makes it ok to say that an unarmed black man deserves to be shot down in the street because he looked ‘suspicious’ or to design voting laws targeted specifically at communities of color. It’s not a country where rich, privileged old men can attack a young woman’s character in vicious and almost pornographic ways simply because they disagree with her politics- and not suffer consequences.
Where the entitled heaping abuse on the oppressed is just free speech, but dissenters criticizing them for it is cancel culture and communism.
It’s not a place where we believe that a helping hand in the middle of a disaster should come with a price tag or require the surrendering of rights, or that hungry children in a land of plenty should hunt through dumpsters for food because if they ask for bread, they’re lazy.
America is not a nation where we think it’s ok for poor people to die from treatable diseases because millionaire CEO’s don’t want to slightly reduce their profits. It’s not a nation with an endless tolerance for those who disdain science and reason and basic human decency, or those that decry ‘government ‘freeloading’ by other people when their own hands are in the cookie jar up to the elbows.
And, thankfully, it’s not a nation where bitter, abusive, obscenely wealthy men can evade any and all punishment for the crimes they commit- including allowing the death of a half-million people for profit.
Not yet.
And now you say that if we tell you to follow public health laws, or get a gun license, or to let people vote by mail, or tax the billionaires to fix our roads, you’re going to leave.
If the army makes me get vaccinated against Covid, I’ll quit!
If congress makes it easier for all citizens to vote, we’ll secede!
That’s awfully hypocritical coming from the same people who call us unpatriotic and yell “America- love it or leave it!” every time we try to update antiquated laws to simply fix the things that are broken so the system works for all people more equally. When we are dissatisfied with the status quo, you accuse us of hating America.
Then you wave your confederate and Nazi flags and tell us to move to Russia if we don’t love America with you in charge.
Now it seems like you don’t love America enough to stick around and work together.
That’s too bad.
Look, we’re not trying to run you out, but you are certainly free to go. I don’t think many of you have actually thought this out from an economic, educational or military perspective, but critical thinking doesn’t seem to be your strong suit anyway.
So pack your stuff, if you must.
Uh, no- you don’t get to take your state with you. Sorry, but that ‘Constitution’ thing you’re always going on about says these states stay together. We fought a war to prove that point.
And you don’t get to keep our flag: that belongs to America, along with the 50 states. You’ll have to pick another to hit people with- but that shouldn’t be hard. You seem to like this one better anyway.
But hey, you can leave, if that’s really what you want: if your entitlement runs so deep that you’d actually rather abandon this ship than continue on the voyage with people who don’t always agree with you. I’m not sure who will want you, but good luck to you.
The border is that-a-way.
It was a solemn occasion, I realized.
Yesterday Ted and I drove an hour south to Logan to get our first Covid-19 vaccine injection from a pharmacy there that started booking appointments for our age group before local ones did. It was a sunny day and an easy drive so we decide to just get it done.
That morning I dressed more carefully than usual. I chose a colorful shirt, my nicest jeans and my good black suede boots. I even put on a little bit of eye make-up.
I laughed at myself as I was doing it, joking that we are all such shut-ins these days with so few chances to go anywhere that I was even dressing up to spend 5 seconds getting a shot. How silly!
I even moved my wallet into my best small purse.
On the drive down, chatting quietly and listening to music, I found myself oddly touched with- awe, I guess, over what we were doing. The two of us, embarking together on our part of this step to… change the world.
I took Ted’s hand and said how amazing it actually is that humans, many of whom are too stupid to come in our of the rain, have been able to unlock both the secret of how something as tiny as a virus works and causes illness, and figure out how to stop them. Polio. Smallpox. And now Covid-19.
In a year the best minds in the world solved the puzzle and in doing so, changed the world.
And now we were about to be part of the change: part of the growing herd of “Humans Who Do Not Have to Hide in Our Houses Because the Covid Virus Will Not Harm Us.”
Incredible.
And I realized that this was why I had dressed with such care that morning. It wasn’t that I am such a shut-in that even going to get a shot felt like an outing. It’s that this was actually a very solemn occasion. One dresses nicely for the rituals of life.
The last time I got dressed up was last April when I went to the crematorium to collect my cousin Margaret’s ashes. I knew I would speak to only 2 other people there, and we would both be masked and standing on opposite sides of the room, but, with no funeral or memorial service possible for her at that time… well, it was kind of her funeral. One shows respect by dressing nicely for a funeral, and so I did.
Yesterday, although we just sat in an almost empty room, got our temperstures checked, arms swabbed and then (after a 15 minute wait to make sure we weren’t going to have an anaphylatic reaction to the serum) sent on our way, we were taking part in a rite of passage, of sorts. One that, at that very moment, people all across the globe were taking part in, or waiting for their turn to take part in.
Except of course for the agitators, bioterrorists and just plain fools who will not: because freedom! Because conspiracies (it implants a government tracking device!) and ignorance ( it will alter your DNA and you won’t be human!) and just general “if those people made it: if they are for it then I won’t take it, even if deep inside I know it will save my life” cussedness.
It’ll be hard to get herd immunity when 40% of the herd refuses to get immune and instead rips off their masks and goes to bars and gyms and parties while Covid-19 is still out there killing people at a somewhat reduced but still alarming rate.
The people who never criticized the Orange Idiot (who said that windmills cause cancer and maybe we should drop a little nuke in hurricanes to blow them apart and Covid is just like the flu and it will magically disappear soon) when he basically ignored the pandemic, allowing it to claim hundreds of thousands of lives, are now criticizing Joe Biden because people are still dying.
As if “red” states lifting all Covid restrictions in the name of “not letting the government tell us what to do” has no part in that. As if the Covidiot mask-deniers who charge maskless into stores that require masks and attack staff and patrons who try to remove them aren’t trying to undo all the good the new administration is doing. (We’d rather die than let a Democrat help us!)
Thanks to the Biden Covid team, we are now on track to have enough vaccine to innoculate *every* adult in America by the end of May!! The trick is getting it done, of course. That’s a big job and the $7B earmarked to help state and local authorities set up and staff more vaccination sites is being blocked by the Republicans who… want more people to die, I guess. (What other explanation is there? They also tried to yank health insurance from millions of people during a pandemic so clearly their “Pro-life” policy doesn’t extend to any actual, living people)
But those of us with functioning brains and human decency are wearing our masks and lining up for our shots and dreaming of a day when we can just run into the store for a jug of milk, hug our kids and eat at a restaurant again.
Until the next one comes along– and it will. Hopefully when it does we will not have a narcissistic sociopath in charge and won’t play politics while a half-million people die.
I took a few pictures and found myself thinking about making a covid memory box, with some of my masks and my mask bin and my vaccination card, to tell the future that I was a part of this.
Yeah definitely I should hang on to a bunch of those masks…
I understand that commercials- even the ones that pretend to be- are not realistic.
Charmin features a family of bears, none of whom wear clothes, with parents who are unwilling to puck up their son’s underpants because they might have poop on them…. but he shows them that, thanks to Charmin, he gets is bottom clean now- and does a dance wherein he waves his naked butt at them to prove it. He doesn’t wear clothes- so why does he have underpants? And did I mention that they are bears?!! Also, they sit bare-assed on upholstered furniture. If they don’t clean properly, dirty underpants are the least of their worries.
Ok, commercials are their own special world. I get that. We tend to tune them out anyway, so when one is so bad that it breaks through the shell, then it starts to bother you every time you have to see it.
Such is the annual Christmas commercial where the wife surprises her husband with a gift of his-and-hers sunglasses, and he takes her outside and surprises her with the gift of his-and-hers massive, luxury pick-up trucks. Surprise! She squeals in delight and runs over and claims… the one that he wanted for himself.
There is SO much wrong with this commercial it’s hard to know where to start, but in 2020, it is a dozen times worse than in other years.
First: who buys someone a car, let alone plunks down $50k for a luxury truck, without letting them drive it and pick the color, options etc. that they want? If you get it wrong, you can’t exactly stand in line to exchange it for the right one the day after Christmas. So it serves him right that she took the color he picked for himself.
This has always bothered me about the “Buy her a car for Christmas” meme where a new ride, tricked out with a 4 foot bow, waits in the driveway to delight the wife and kids. (Also, do car dealers actually sell those giant bows, ’cause I’ve never seen them in the Christmas section at Target.)
Second: Because we’re not quite shittily, smugly rich enough just putting one car ‘under the tree’, now we’re gonna drop $100k on two vehicles without any need for a family consultation about finances (and regardless of the fact that we clearly don’t need even one pick-up because these folks are NOT the “hauling firewood or scrap salvage” type).
Name me a spouse out there whose first reaction upon seeing that much cash sitting in the drivwway wouldn’t be to say “What the hell did you do?” But no- she runs greedily to claim her prize, like a kid who finds both a chocolate AND a vanilla ice cream cone.
There are always poor people. I often wonder (sadly, that’s how my brain works) how it feels to see these rich people commercials all day. Because that’s the ad standard: a lifestyle that can’t be maintained on less than a quarter million dollar income to sell laundry detergent. Imagine struggling to make the rent this month because your daughter was sick and you had to miss 2 days of work and seeing “regular folks” depicted as rich. . Commercials may have added some black families and Hispanic families and same-sex families to the mix but they never feature regular, driving a 10 year-old-car, working-class folks.
Christmas ads are one giant smash in the face, reminding most of the country that they are not part of the American dream.
And here’s where 2020 factors in.
We’re entering another lock-down phase (because Covidiots apparently want to die) which means some businesses that had only recently opened will be closing again. There are millions of families with an estimated 18 million children experiencing hunger and facing the possibility of homelessness right at the holidays, and the Republican party refuses to even debate the second Covid relief bill that the House passed months ago. I digress.
Imagine being stuck in your tiny house again with your kids out of school again and you out of work again and your suck-ass Republican congressman too busy packing the court with extremists, insulting people who wear masks and not telling the President to concede the damn election to care about you having nothing to feed your kids for dinner…. and then this truck commercial comes on the TV.
I get it: some people are rich. I know that 10 rich people matter more than 1000 poor ones. That’s not new, or exclusive to the repulsive, consumer economy that is America.
But now? With the life-or-death struggle that millions of your fellow citizens are going through right now, you have to make people feel even worse with commercials like that?
It’s just extra mean. Nyah-nyah, we’re giving ourselves trucks for Christmas and you’re hoping for a loaf of bread! Shouldn’t have been born poor, fool!
Even the covid-catering commercials are all people “struggling” to deal with working from home “during these challenging times”… so they jump on their very expensive indoor trainer bike to relieve tension.
The rich have theirs, and most of them clearly don’t give a damn about anybody else.
Tracy Meisky is a poet, writer, singer, songwriter and all-around boat rocker from way back. Feel free to look around, but if you break it, you bought it.