Already Present in the World

“In an age of almost unparalleled extremism, violence and cruelty, authoritarianism is gaining ground, rapidly creating a society in which shared fears and unchecked hatred have become the organizing forces for community. Under the Trump regime, dissent is disparaged as a pathology or dismissed as fake news, while even the slightest compassion for others becomes an object of disdain and subject to policies that increase the immiseration, suffering and misery of the most vulnerable.” Henry Giroux

Ash from the Thomas Fire in Ventura is falling like snow outside my window. The air quality is unhealthy and the sun is the color of a ripe peach. The wildfires raging in various parts of California are clearly exacerbated by anthropogenic climate change, but don’t bother telling Scott Pruitt or the other venal nitwits in the Trump Administration -- they refuse to believe the evidence right in front of them.

People walking in downtown Santa Barbara wear dust masks or bandanas. Is this what the apocalypse will look like? The schools in the unified district have been shuttered for two straight days. There has hardly been any wind, so the smoke from the fires lays over the city like a malevolent blanket. Some fire officials believe the Thomas Fire could burn until Christmas. More than 130,000 acres have burned thus far. There’s no rain in the forecast, even though this is supposed to be our “rainy” season. When and if rain comes, it will likely produce mudslides, but not to fear, this has nothing to do with climate change, that Chinese hoax.

This is the age of cruelty and stupidity. As I noted on this blog many months ago, Trump and his band of kleptocrats will do enormous damage to the nation, exacerbate our most pressing problems, and fuck things up but good for a generation -- if not longer. Despair is an easy emotion to fall into, and I have been guilty of this many times in the last 12 months. In normal times -- and these are anything but normal times -- I tend to brood and see the world through a dark lens; cynicism comes easy to me. These are not traits I’m proud of, but I recognize them for what they are. But sunny optimism without an understanding of the work required to make any kind of change -- personal, social -- seems naive. Wishing will not make something so, effort is required, and not only effort, sustained effort, through setbacks and failures and dead ends and dark nights when any progress seems impossible.  

The writer Rebecca Solnit whose book, Hope in the Dark, I am reading now, says this: “What we dream of is already present in the world.” I dream of a world less bent on its own destruction, a world where cooperation is more valued than competition, a world in which the pursuit of money isn’t the highest ideal, a world where one human life isn’t deemed more valuable than another, a world of far less wealth inequality, one in which large numbers of people can satisfy their basic needs for food, shelter, medical care, clothing, work and education, a world where a person of color in a hoody and baggy pants and white sneakers  can walk in a predominantly white neighborhood and not be considered suspect, dangerous, a threat.

Come off your corner stool, move to the middle of the ring, start punching. Don’t stop.