In response to my latest update on climate change, a reader remarks:
I hate to be a downer, but civilization will be toast by the end of this century — and it’ll be an ugly trip to that destination.
Maybe. But humanity sometimes finds a way to wriggle its way out of dubious situations. I think the Covid-19 pandemic, along with the chronic incompetency of Trump, has slapped a whole lot of people in the face about the realities of wishful thinking.
In fact, yesterday I was wondering what I would do if I was confronted with a pack of MAGA-hat wearing oldsters, as we happen to have a retirement community just across the street, and another one a-building down the road. In my fevered imagination, it’d go something like this, keeping in mind my hair went prematurely white years ago:
ME: Hey, folks.
CRANKY OLD GUY (COG): Hey, are you with us? (Shakes his cane at ME.)
ME: What are you?
(All together): Trump supporters!
(COG): See our hats? (Waves hat, exposing a pale pate.)
ME: I certainly am not.
(Discontented yelling and muttering. More cane swinging.)
COG: Why not? Are you a fucking Democrat?
ME: (smile) I’m an independent!
COG: Yeah? Hit by cars going both ways, then – hah!
ME: Not in the least, I’m far too fast on my feet. No, friends, it just means I get to think for myself.
(More muttering)
ME: Look, everyone settle down and I’ll tell you a story.
COG: Why?
ME: Because … I feel like it. OK, everyone settled? (COG mumbles but shuts up.) Back in the 1930s – anyone here grow up then? No? – the United States was mostly isolationist. Folks believed getting involved in the events in Europe that were leading to World War II was wrong; they were not our affair. So we didn’t officially get involved in the Spanish Civil War, and when Hitler’s Germany became more and more menacing, again Americans didn’t wish to become involved.
COG: We did nothing?
ME: Not precisely. President Roosevelt was not an Isolationist, and in fact arranged the Lend-Lease Program, wherein we sent obsolete naval vessels to the British, virtually for free.
But the shared view of Americans definitely tied his hands and restrained him from preparing properly for the storm clouds on the horizon.
And then came December 7, 1941. The day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor – remember? The day before, we were a nation of determined isolationist sentiment. The day after, we were in shock. And the day after that, America had discarded its shared delusion and began preparing for war, whether it was joining the service, beginning rationing, or transitioning businesses to a war-time footing.
COG: So what?
ME: Friends, I see a definite similarity between December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attack was the great slap of reality to our face, and the two defining incidents of today.
COG: Yeah? I don’t think so.
ME: Sure. Here are the great face slaps that reality has administered to us recently. First, the Covid-19 pandemic, our vastly incompetent response, the lives we’ve lost – surely you all have lost friends to it – and how badly we compare to many other countries has, has exposed our leadership – President Trump – as a monumental fraud.
COG: (Enraged) Bah!
ME: You can scoff if you wish, but then there’s the second incident. President Trump has campaigned on promises of No Change, Everything Will Be OK and You’re Fine How You Are! Isn’t that what attracts you? He told coal miners that their jobs would return, factory workers that factories would reopen, investors that the economy would come roaring back, that he’d rebuild the military, and all would be just as fabulous as it was before?
COG: So?
ME: And then came the George Floyd incident, and the black community said, once again, It’s Never Been Great, It’s Never Been OK, It’s Not Even Tolerable. They reminded us of slavery, the Tulsa White Supremacy riot which killed so many, the Tuskegee Experiment, the Democratic Convention riots, sharecroppers, segregation, separate but equal, police harassment of the black community, lynchings, and systemic racism.
COG: S-s-so?
ME: And they forced it upon our attention: maybe it was great for you folks, but not for them. Floyd was, from all appearances, deliberately murdered by a policeman, as have been a number of other blacks over the years. That’s the other great slap of reality that should eliminate the magical thinking that has infected American thinking for the last thirty years.
COG: Fuck you! (Turns and wave his cane at the crowd.) Come on! Fuck you!
(The crowd is angry but uneasy)
ME: I don’t expect anyone here to change their minds. Not right now. All I want to think is that you’ll go home and think about your support of a man who continually claims that all we have to do is go back to how things were. When racists could lynch blacks, for example. And how you can approve that.
COG: Fuck you! (Turns to leave, beckoning the crowd!) Fucking liberal! Come on, folks.
(As the crowd leaves, several are holding their red hats in their hands, and as they file away, one sails through the air and lands in a garbage can.)
I do have lurid fantasies.
