2020, Year of the Rat

From the Corona Files

I should have had a premonition about 2020.

Not everything can be blamed on the virus—2020 by all accounts was already shaping up to be a stinker.

So many foundational, rock-solid, salt-of-the-earth type stuff was liquefying, falling away, proving to be dust in the wind. Here is a small list:

Boy Scouts

Jean Vanier

the Methodist Church

for that matter all churches

add to that the people in them

The disappointment has certainly been building through the years. And, it’s nothing new: I recognized hypocrisy in the church when I was in my 20s. But, there had been a LOT of good also. I’d met caring concerned people as well as the jerks that have always been there. The genuine and authentic always seemed to outnumber the people who ruin it for everyone. Then there came a tipping point.

At least I could trust Jean Vanier, winner of the Templeton Award for Humanitarian service, someone who had devoted his life to the “least of these.” Then comes the bombshell: he’d been lying, a sexual predator, creating a subterfuge in which to hide behind. One cannot go back and reread his once profound writings without this knowledge.

I’ve known so many great Scout leaders and the kids have had the chance to grow and do so many wonderful things. I know as a kid I loved the camping, the extra attention given to me by adults. If it had only been a few bad apples—instead of a culture that valued pretense over truth. At a certain point transparency becomes too expensive; no turning back. To come clean means losing EVERYTHING.

Instead these institutions and leaders have left me with empty hands, holding nothing. All that seemed solid is sinking sand.

That self-protected part that wants to give the benefit of the doubt has accepted, cynically, to not become too attached to perception because at any moment the other shoe might drop.

So too our national leaders, this administration, the CDC, the FDA, the people who were supposed to protect us—during this epidemic I’ve seen them value reopening the economy versus the collateral loss of a few hundred thousand older people, those living on the margins or with disabilities. For those who purport to be pro-life, I’ve never seen politicians so eager to toss people my age out of the lifeboat. Suddenly I’m dispensable.

I’ve been betrayed by those I believed in in this year of the Rat.