Redtree Times

Further On Up the Road– At West End Gallery

Let the living live; and you, gather together your thoughts, leave behind you a legacy of feeling and ideas; you will be most useful so.

–Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Amiel’s Journal: The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel

At Saturday’s Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery, I called myself a childless cat person at one point. Can’t remember in what context it was said but it got a pretty good laugh. It was, of course, in reference to the absurd comments from the GOP vice-presidential candidate who said that childless cat women were bad people, even going so far as calling them sociopaths. He said that because they were childless, they had no stake in the future. No skin in the game.

He has also stated in various interviews that such people deserve to be punished with higher taxation and penalties and that, in the future he desires and is working toward, women would be required to procreate.

It is as though he and his ilk read The Handmaid’s Tale and thought that the dystopian hellscape portrayed in it would make a pretty cool template to build on.

His comments were aimed at women in a manner that revealed his misogyny, selfishness, cynicism, and disregard for others. In other words, the current GOP’s platform.

It also revealed that he and his kind were incapable of caring for the plight of anyone or anything that didn’t affect them directly.

To me, that is disqualifying, making them incapable of governing all the people of this country. It is an attitude that may well leads to atrocity. How far is the jump from this attitude to one that sees the severely mentally or physically challenged as having no stake in the future? Will it then see them as a drag on our resources and economy, something to be eradicated?

It is not that big a jump from his current thinking to that horrific potential and many others.

As to whether a childless cat person such as myself has any skin in the game for the future, let me just say that I have a niece and nephews, grand-nephews, the children and grandchildren of friends as well as many younger friends for whom I have great love and affection. I care very much about the future, about the freedoms, potentials, and the environment in which they will live.

I feel like I have skin in the game, not only in a personal way through family and friends, but also through my work. I may not have my own progeny going forward in time but hopefully my actions now and my work that has found its way around the world will continue to have even a small effect on a future generation or two.

I can’t say that it will, but I can rest easy knowing that I tried. And that’s the best anyone can do for the future.

Just try.

Here’s a song I play every so often here. It fits well. This is To Leave Something Behind from Sean Rowe.