A Shot at a Meaningful Life

“I think after going through the common humiliations of a human life, I realized it just doesn’t matter. There’s nobody who can disguise himself. Eventually we’re all outed in one way or another.” Denis Johnson

Survived another week in TrumpLand. The Orange Menace didn’t blow up the world. Trump and his mafia family, Jared and Ivanka, all the corrupt hangers-on, the grifters, and the outright idiots, profaning the White House, day after day. Mike Pence and the Mad Hatter Christians wait in the shadows, Paul Ryan holds the bloody scalps of the poor. Cruel nation, up by your bootstraps or into the gutter with the rest of the losers.

My wife is on the phone with Verizon Wireless, trying to add international calling to her mother’s line ahead of an upcoming trip to the UK. The voice on the other end is that of an African-American male, and he’s obviously reading from a script, and I’m certain that he’s a prison inmate, somewhere. I give him the name Jerome Pettis, guest of the state, working for a Verizon call center, cheap, accessible labor with no rights -- a capitalist’s dream of heaven. Jerome has a southern accent, Arkansas or Mississippi, and talks slowly: “I can definitely help you with that, Ma’am, can I tell you about our packages…” I wonder what Jerome did that landed him in prison, armed robbery, rape, murder? More likely a minor drug crime for which, in the great American tradition of injustice, the big book was flung at him. Black and poor has always equaled injustice. At heart I imagine Jerome is a decent man, simply trying to make the best of his situation, there are worse things than talking to a cranky widow from Toledo, Ohio about her new iPhone. Jerome is patient as he reads from the approved script, but of course, he’s got nothing but time, slow time. Jerome tears me in two: part of me applauds his desire to improve his circumstances, and part wants him to rebel, to refuse, to rise from his cubicle quoting Malcolm X, and demand to be remanded to his cell.

The heaviness of this stupid country, my country, the heaviness of injustice, in contrast to the simple joys of my little family, our spats and petty arguments about who left the milk out all night or forgot to take the trash out. Simple, everyday life. Domestic chores, grocery shopping, my wife watching Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder. I want my children to have a solid liberal arts education so they can understand who they are as people, their place in the world; I want them to think independently and to see issues from all sides, to question, to stand up to authority figures who often misuse their power; I hope they will revere books and writers as I do, and painting and theater as their mother does. Like all parents, Syrian, German, Yemeni, Chinese, I want my children to have a shot at a meaningful life. Why do we make this so hard for so many? Why do we cause so much needless suffering? Because some are never satisfied, they must have bigger, faster, shinier, and they must have control over others. Story of humankind -- let me impose my religion, beliefs, culture, and economy upon you. What? You will not submit willingly? Well, no problem, we have many other ways to extract your obedience.

And on it goes, on we go, into the unknown.