Samain Thanksgiving Moon
I imagine, all round the U.S., on all political sides, a fervent Thanksgiving prayer will be, “Thank God, it’s over.” Of course, the finish of this demeaning, dispiriting and dismal campaign will not heal the divisions it has unveiled. Welcome to the new America where less-educated white men and women are newly visible as an underprivileged and problematic slice of the citizenry.
Wow. From my 1950’s childhood in eastern central Indiana that sentence would have seemed like a fever dream, a nightmare, a unicorn in the possible futures branching off from the Atomic Age. Yet here we are: much more demographically diverse, decimated unions, manufacturing both fled on the one hand and roboticized on the other, birthrates among the white population long in decline, even the familiar protestant and catholic profile of white, high school educated America, slumping toward secularism. Family farms have become vestigial to the onrush of corporate agriculture. The home states of blue collar workers are either now the rust belt or the Confederate flag waving south or the unhappy west of Sage Brush rebellion militants.
None of these trends, decades now in the making, will be easily turned around, especially since the common good will to solve them seems absent. This means the next decade, perhaps, literally, the rest of my life, will be spent attempting to negotiate the political terms of a new U.S. This is necessary and it is the chief reason politics exists in the first place, to barter out differences among groups. But it will not be easy and it may be violent. The politics of frustration often bends in that direction.
On the other hand we have no choice. These are divisions, like Jim Crow (and its contemporary manifestations), the plight of the undocumented, the integration of refugees from the Middle East that have no simple answers. In fact, even addressing them creates political resistance. Again, it doesn’t matter. Our public square has potholes and fissures deep enough to swallow our future unless we figure out how to live together.
Gotta say, the notion of this struggle energizes me. Let’s get ready. Let’s do this.
