Samain Thanksgiving Moon
He sits, early in the morning, while it is still dark outside, with his head in his hands. Orion, his longtime friend hangs in the sky visible to the southwest, Scorpio and Cassiopeia and the Drinking Gourd out there, too. A crescent Thanksgiving Moon, waxing toward its Super Moon event on November 25th, was visible last night.
If only the world could be quiet, serene, beautiful like the 5 am dark sky here on Shadow Mountain. No pussy grabbing. No complaints about raping 13 year old girls. No encouragement of political violence. No cynical comments about the validity of our electoral process.
Perhaps he could just slip away, go to some Trump Island in the the general area of Antarctica or maybe a luxury masted sailing ship forever circling the diminishing sea ice of the North Pole. Like Frankenstein’s creation. I would make a comparison between Trump and Frankenstein’s monster, but the monster was Frankenstein.
In this case Trumpism is the monster, a living candidacy patched together from a body of populist resentment, the brain of a nativist bigot, the nervous system of fearful white males and the legs of second-amendment worshipping other-phobic citizens. The arms, though, the arms are Trump’s, dangling like the tentacles of a squid, ready to grab, squeeze, embrace. Force. Trump is Frankenstein to this political moment in the Republican Party. The GOP provided the lightning that brought this monster to life and has paraded it with pride through this mockery of a campaign.
These are the most perilous political times in which I have lived. There are milita’s preparing an armed response to a potential Hillary gun-grabbing presidency. Our to this point normative peaceful transition of power after a Presidential election is under threat. This is a core feature of our democracy. The stakes on one issue, strangely absent from the campaign, are ultimate, the very survival of the human race may hang in the balance: climate change. The timer counting down the years in which we can still soften the blow of advancing global warming nears its alarm.
Race relations are in a visibly violent phase. Police kill black folks with so steady a drumbeat that it has become like Trump’s long string of insults to America, dulling our capacity for outrage. Misogyny is at its peak in the Donald, powerful at the same time as our first serious female candidate.
The Forever War has captured our youth, our money, our tolerance. We bomb and shoot and strike with drones, again dulling our capacity for outrage by desensitization.
I am not a man given to despair. Hamlet, that most existential of Shakespeare’s plays, offers a choice in the often quoted to be or not to be soliloquy. Do we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them? I know my answer.
Rabbi Tarfon is credited with this quote: “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it” (Avot 2:21). wiki This is a wonderful thought because it drives directly against despair, relieving us of the expectation of finishing our political work, yet not letting us set it aside either.
So, when confronted with the potential momentary success of hate-filled, other-despising politics, those of us committed to a diverse, egalitarian world must not pull back, must not flee to Canada, must not despair. We are not, as Rabbi Tarfon said, at liberty to desist.
