Without Context

A short story: my friend’s 11 year-old daughter said that she has to leave her cell phone in a bucket by the door to her classroom. Like some old lady I said that they didn’t have those when I was in school. She responded, “Buckets?”

Yeah, it’s funny, but also speaks volumes into our current political/global situation—without context there is no understanding. We shake our heads: How are we going to describe someday life under a pandemic?

I can add to that a long list of other things that unless you lived through it no one would understand. I certainly don’t understand and I’m living it right now.

How 72 million people could have voted for a man who said he likes to grab pussy, paid off porn stars, and even said his own daughter was hot.

How Christians can vote for someone so diametrically opposite of what/who a Christian should be and say they are voting their conscience, their values.

How folks can vote against their better interests by trying to overturn the Affordable Care Act—or here in Illinois the Fair Tax a graduated income tax tied to how much a person makes, meaning a billionaire would pay more than a person working at MacDonald’s instead of an across the board 21%.

How people can side with a party of elected officials who actually try to subvert the election process by calling it fraudulent, rigged, a hoax, a game, and try to get legal ballots thrown out, make it harder for people to vote by moving or consolidating polling places, injecting confusion over ID, by reducing the early voting time, by making it harder to vote by mail, requiring a notary, or that a person who was once convicted pay all taxes and fees before voting.

How during a pandemic where every medical professional on the planet is saying wear a mask, there are those who say it’s just a flu, a mere cold, that they don’t need to wear a mask, wash their hands, and decide to have an extended Thanksgiving, go to bars, and castigate the healthcare system as money grabbers, and in fact, have equated being patriotic with NOT wearing a mask.

How there can be anti-vaxers in the midst of a race for a vaccine to help all of us go back to “normal.”

How older Americans who fought in World War II to defeat fascists in Europe can see their way through to voting for a man that tweets authoritarian, anti-democratic rubbish.

How in the face of scientific evidence and our own better interest and our children’s future, there is no care for the environments, to cut carbon emissions, conserve water, clean water, the food chain . . .  

 

Things are so upside down. Years from now, if there is a future, how can we even begin to explain.