Refugees in America
You’ve probably seen them too by now, eyes rolled back, heads lolling, hands at their sides fingers twitching, wandering aimlessly with no destination, no obvious direction. Their lips are moving but the only sounds aren’t speech, just incomprehensible mutterings, muted sighs, vague exhalations, an occasional stifled sob. Ashen faced, they seem stunned, shocked, survivors of some unseen catastrophe.
You think Zombies. But you know you’ve seen too much bad TV, too many derivative movies about the Undead. No, these are living people, people you know. If there are any people you know anymore.
These are the catatonics from last night’s horrorshow election, the folks who never dreamed their neighbors, their friends, their family members even would vote in … that man. That crass creepy cretin of a human being, the very incarnation of kitsch and excess, a braggart billionaire so lacking in noblesse oblige they can’t wrap their confused heads around the reality. Around ALL reality.
Who knows how long it will take to come down off those evil hallucinogens someone slipped in their Chablis while they were settling in for an enjoyable evening of election returns, canapes balanced on their napkined laps? Who knows when the earth will tilt back onto its proper axis? At the moment there are no more predictions. The unthinkable … yes, the unthinkable. And the impossibility of even trying.
Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in a week. Maybe, if they could only get a flimsy handle on this, maybe … well, maybe never. The country they lived in is gone now. They will wander its barren landscape knowing they were always strangers in a strange land, a land inhabited by faces seemingly familiar, but only masks. Their homes are gone. Someone has changed the locks. The squatters. The new owners. For the unknowable future, they’re the new refugees, lost in America. Whatever you do, no matter how much you’d like to help, give them a wide berth. They’re beyond all that now.
Yes. I’m trying to shake off the heavy glaze of catatonia which has enveloped me these past few days. I try to tell myself that in reality not much has changed, the frogs peep at night, the waves crash on the shore, the bird songs remain unaffected by a new dawn. As you noted earlier Skeeter, it’s a good time to refocus, prioritize, and move into the endeavors of life which bring us joy, when we can.
After all, we probably felt a similar tremor move through our bones the day after Nixon defeated McGovern. In retrospect, I now find I can admit occasionally, in quiet moments, that it was Nixon who finally helped America discover that one quarter of the earth’s population existed in a country called China. That Nixon signed Title IX, which allowed one half of the people in America (women) to better engage in sporting activities, if they chose.
We even gave the nuclear launch codes to Ronald Reagan, a bad Hollywood actor, and let him keep control as he descended into Alzheimer’s Disease the last three years of his administration, while his wife expropriated policy decisions with the help of her psychic. And yet, somehow, we survived. From this vantage point I don’t look back at those years as particularly Deep Dark Ages.
There will be events in the days to come which are beyond our control, but should we remain healthy, and watchful, and realize we’re still surrounded by pockets of hope, and joy in life filled with music, kind and intelligent words, and artistry in and of the world around us, we’ll make it. Again.