Back on the Rickety Ladder

First - must register shock that I never opened this blog in the year 2016.  We were busy.  There was the country's most vile election in history on the one hand, and on the other, production of our first feature film, an against-all-odds journey across that same country, graced by glorious sunrises, sunsets, rainbows, helpful strangers, and highway safety over 3,200+ miles.

Now we must live with the world that election wrought.  Like many, I have not slept well since November, some nights barely at all since January 20th.  The imagination goes to toxic rivers and air, internment for Muslims, assassinations of journalists and political opposition leaders, the dismantling of public education, and endless manufactured wars that justify a fascist coup and the end of constitutional government.  Already most people I know are reconsidered their digital footprint.  Will this post be used against me?  Maybe.

Sooner or later, true patriotism – the heart's attachment to justice, equality before the law, enlightened stewardship of our land and honorable dealing with global neighbors, not the shallow, jingoistic macho patriotism peddled by Trump– is risky business.  It turns out our generation is not exempt from this risk.  This is something of a shock to our Sesame Street generation.  For all the set backs we could name, we are the generation in which Science, Creativity, and Justice prevailed.  We were born the year man landed on the moon; we were the beneficiaries of the Civil Rights and Women's movements; we survived the end of the Cold War, watching the Berlin wall fall – in my case on Japanese TV where I lived among my grandparents' generation's enemies; we traded francs in for Euros and traveled freely on EurRail passes.  We witnessed science and public health contain the AIDS epidemic, the dot.com gold rush, the smartphone and Facebook revolutions.  We elected the most dignified president ever, one of our generation and outlook, who rescued an economy in free fall, got Osama Bin Laden, made inroads on insuring millions for health care, kept us safe from terrorism for 8 years, and gave us the "No Drama Obama" model of Cool under Pressure.  And yet...

I'm sure there isn't a head that hasn't being scratched in this country (and much of the world) wondering how this rapid and vicious unraveling could happen.  For a time I turned off the radio, let the newspapers stack up, turned to more eternal sources – snow falling, the hills, psalms, the smell of my children's heads, the chickadees and tufted titmouse birds at the feeder, my grandmother's 100th birthday – but the mind never stops churning...  Questions and more questions... What were the structural flaws in the America we were building in our time?  What parts of progress came by suppression vs. change/growth in consciousness?  What are the real economic and cultural dynamics that have abandoned rural America (which I witness daily here)?  What are the consequences of speech unleashed on social media, and is there a path back to civil discourse?  What is the role of popular culture in shaping our reality, and comedy in both outing and undermining "truth"?  How do we define "the good life" or what it means to be human?  What is the relationship between the health of the body politic and the individual?  Where is there honor in manhood, womanhood, parenthood, citizenship now?  How has the narrative failed, or, what is this crisis of meaning, and how do we remedy it?  What is the role of faith, and how do we nurse so many hurting souls all around?

For 2017, I'd like to climb back on the rickety ladder to think about these questions (and many more) slowly.  I appreciate you, family and friend readers, helping me think better, more clearly.  I think half the evil unleashed on the world last year owed to so many trigger-fingers tweeting and Facebooking before thinking.  As we try to teach the boys in our Hebrew studies together, our thoughts will be filled with all manner of ugliness; they are first drafts. But when we speak, they become real in the world, so let's take our time to measure them.

I also want to use this blog to gather some of the best articles, videos, etc. – words well chosen by others, with an aim to curate for quality (or at least significance?) over quantity.  Along those lines, here are some thought-provokers for future posts:

George Packer, "Hillary Clinton and the Populist Revolt," The New Yorker 10/31/16
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/hillary-clinton-and-the-populist-revolt

Emily Nussbaum, "How Jokes Won the Election," The New Yorker 1/23/17
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/how-jokes-won-the-election

Bill Maher, "New Rule: Stop Apologizing"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaC1-U8LIY0

President Barak Obama's Farewell Address
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udrKnXueTW0

Breitbart News,
http://www.breitbart.com/

Plato, The Republic
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

Valarie Kaur, Groundswell Movement
https://youtu.be/LCenwgheIBs

Theme for next time:  Empathy Redistribution