“Hello Darkness My Old Friend, I’ve Come To Talk To You Again” … Some Personal Reflections.

from the late Arthur Gilbert’s personal collection of Holocaust art… Exhibited at the Denver Public Library. We’re not gonna let this happen again. Not here, there nor anywhere.

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I am hearing many pessimistic commentaries on human nature, people looking at the (real) ugliness of the human experience today, the self-destructiveness of the society into which many of us live. It includes a revulsion, almost a hatred of humanity for the crimes, the stupidities it perpetuates; this mood is being to dominate the minds of many.

The logic continues: human beings have not improved; there is no progress; to the contrary, the human experience has deteriorated, become more narcissistic, selfish, crueler and more treacherous, baser, meaner. That is what many are thinking right now.

Of course there are bitter truths we all face. And the night will be long. And yet, the world has gone through worse … not that knowing this helps for many in the current moment.

But I have before me in my little cubicle in our basement, the photos of my teachers, my mentors: Tolstoy, Marx, Primo Levi, Braudel, Samir Amin, Robert Merle, my high school Social Studies teacher, Mr. Rose who taught me the power of History, my mother and Aunt Mal, people with last names that mean little to nothing to most, but the world to me – Fawaz, Pakeslahti, Myerson, Bloice, Vigil, Kazerooni, Stewart, Fitting and, above all Fey – all my teachers in love with humanity, all great humanists, regardless of how they label themselves.

I shall remain faithful to my teachers even as the darkness descends. And there will be a dawn distant as it now appears for us all – for the homeless here in the USA, for the victims of racism here and elsewhere, for the people of the Congo, Ethiopia, Algeria, Guatemala, Vietnam.

Once in my life I ran, in fear… it was from the Vietnam draft. And I found refuge from that storm in North Africa. Today, I ain’t running anymore. Ain’t going anywhere, not to Spain, not to Mexico, or wherever. Here, with Nancy, friends, family, political colleagues, neighbors, I’ll make my stand for whatever it is to follow … I am quite relaxed these days about the road ahead. Strange. As the national situation deteriorates here in the USA, as the mask which has hidden the true nature of the society in which we live has been torn off and we see, in all its ugliness and honesty, the true face of American capitalism in the person of the orange asshole, an overweight misogynist, racist piece of shit who is now president of the United States.

Got a few more years (I think) to kick the powers that be in the shins and, on a good day, a bit higher. A crisis for all its insecurities, ugliness is also an opportunity. But to do so, we have get off our butts.

And after the storm,

morning will break … for all of us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmAOBosGlHY