CommentsBELL VIEW--If I had to come up with one word to describe this past year it would have to be “ugly.” I think that’s what gets to me the most, the unfathomable ugliness of this American moment. If beauty is truth, truth beauty – then surely we live in a false time. Ugliness has wrapped its greasy fingers around – not just Christmas – but even Thanksgiving, that most perfect holiday.
It becomes more and more difficult to give thanks freely, without some remorse, and anger and … yes … hatred. It’s everywhere. I don’t like to engage in “both sides do it” thinking, but truly the hatred is equal on both sides. I know it because I feel it myself.
The ridiculous circus of 2017 is too much to recount in one sitting. The rich, it seems, have sensed their moment has finally come. A critical mass of us has proven we no longer care about anything: children, schools, the environment, veterans, the elderly, healthcare, jobs, the water we drink, the air we breathe – everything is up for grabs as long as the takers put on a good show. And so they’ve decided to take it once and for all.
And the brutal carnival of ugliness whirls on into our daily routine until we lose count of the things we once held sacred. 2018, we’re told, is going to bring a reckoning – but I have little hope left. As I write this, Trump is crowing on television about the greatest heist in world history. Even Trump’s supporters know the Republican tax plan is a ripoff – but as long as it pisses people like me off, it’s worth the price.
We are living in a real-world Milgram Experiment – the one where students administered electric shocks to strangers. The purpose of this particular experiment is to test how much pain we will inflict on ourselves in order to inflict equal or greater pain on others. Except it’s not an experiment, it’s real, and the men who devised the technique never imagined it would work so perfectly.
I’ve been walking the streets of the Palos Park Illinois these past few days – an idyllic bedroom community tucked into Cook County’s vast forest preserves southwest of Chicago. The weather is crisp and cold, the hills barren and covered in decaying leaves, bare trees – red oak, sugar maple, cottonwood, and blackthorn – splay their black limbs and twigs in Jackson Pollack patterns against the blue gray winter sky. I walk the streets in a heavy winter coat, dark glasses, and a wool cap. I’m not from here – this is my mother-in-law’s neighborhood. I know no one, and no one knows me. But I feel safe here – demographics 98% white.
I ask myself how things would be different if I were simply a black man – same family, same wife, same beautiful children. A black man walking the streets of America, breathing the free air of a free country. Would I be safe? The answer is simple: No. I’d be picked up in five minutes – and that’s where everything goes wrong. That’s where we’re stuck – maybe forever.
2018 feels like a last chance. It feels as if the entire tide of human nature is aligned against the forces of good, truth, and beauty. We are living in an ugly revenge fantasy – and the beast has not finished feeding.
I’ve been told that Hell is the death of hope. I may not be there yet – but I can see it from here.
(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.)
-cw
