Navigating Chaos– Now at the Principle Gallery
Once By The Pacific
The shattered water made a misty din.
Great waves looked over others coming in,
And thought of doing something to the shore
That water never did to land before.
The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,
Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.
You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
–Robert Frost
Yesterday morning, I came home from a regular checkup with my doctor and as I was about to turn in the driveway the news came across the radio that Roe v. Wade was overturned. It was not unexpected, of course. We knew for months that this was coming. But even so, it still was shocking to hear the news.
Stunning, actually.
Before that moment, I had been envisioning imagery from possible scenarios going ahead but they still seemed just figments of the imagination. Daydreams, both good and bad. But the news was like a starter’s pistol going off. It was now real and the race was on.
I came across these lines from Robert Frost :
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.
Someone had better be prepared for rage.
There would be more than ocean-water broken
Before God’s last Put out the Light was spoken.
The lines struck me deeply, especially in the aftermath of the events of the last several days that coupled the reversal of Roe v. Wade and several other politically driven court decisions that conflict with the sentiments of the majority of Americans with the revelations of treasonous treachery of the former president* and his cronies that have emerged during the Jan. 6 hearings.
Frost’s words gave me a feeling of dark foreboding, that these ideologues do not realize the force and intensity of the rage they may have unleashed upon themselves. They have used hypothetical threats and created fears to energize their base of support but in doing so they have now created an opposition force that is built on legitimate fear and desperation.
Add a sense of righteous rage to the fear and desperation of the majority and you have a pretty potent cocktail. And that’s something much more powerful than anything these smug ideologues have ever tasted.
And that potency is only going to grow in coming days as the true ramifications of this reversal become evident. For example, in many of the states that now outlaw abortion rights, in vitro fertilization (IVF) will become illegal because these states decree that life begins at fertilization and the excess and unused fertilized eggs are discarded.
Or take the case of a pregnant woman with the unfortunate luck to have cancer at the same moment. In many of the states whose anti-abortion laws went immediately into effect, it becomes potentially criminal for a cancer doctor to administer chemotherapy to a pregnant woman.
There are plenty of other scenarios out there pertaining to the effects of this reversal. But it doesn’t necessarily stop there. In his assent, Clarence Thomas stated with little equivocation that other rights of privacy presently in place– birth control, same-sex marriage, choice of sexual preferences– are on the chopping block.
Make no mistake- this is not the end of what these people want.
There are no moderate theocracies. No moderate authoritarian states.
They will not stop here.
Unless we stop them. Now.
That’s not hyperbole, people.
You might ask why I care. I am, after all, an aging white man in Whitemanistan with all the privileges and benefits attached to that. I just think that everyone should have every right and every opportunity to live their lives as they choose so long as they respect the lives and choices of others. I don’t want people bothering me or meddling in my life and I sure as hell don’t want to meddle in the lives of others.
The happiness of others makes my own happiness deeper. And the anguish of others makes my own deeper, as well. Much as John Donne wrote, my life and work is involved with mankind:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The bells are tolling, folks. The starter’s pistol has went off. It’s real now and the differences between two sides in this momentous competition are as stark as one can imagine. One is a side standing for personal freedom and choice while the other has a burning desire for even more control over the individual in the form of theocratic authoritarianism.
It’s 2022.
It is now or never.
And someone had better be prepared for rage…
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