Caught between a rock and a hard place in America

com·mu·ni·tar·i·an | \ kə-ˌmyü-nə-ˈter-ē-ən\ : of or relating to social organization in small cooperative partially collectivist communities

I had not ever heard this word before today. On Ryan Holiday’s Podcast The Daily Stoic, his guest, Rich Roll, used the term while describing the type of unrest that seems a new normal in American culture and politics today (https://dailystoic.com/rich-roll/).

He said what is lacking is the kind of communitarianism often seen as part of the culture in Europe. 

What has transpired over the last four years or so is a Grand Canyonesque rift between right and left, conservative and progressive, heartland and city that pits individuals against each other with the full conviction of the source of their knowledge as being right and others wrong. There is no community, only individuals clenching tightly to their so-called liberties. While people die. And businesses fail.

Throughout American history we have always had disagreement and sometimes acted less civilized than more—the Civil War, the civil rights battles of the 1960’s to name two. But we seemed to have risen Phoenix-like each time to largely come together. 

I’ve not experienced anything like today in my life. 

My neighbor up the street taped a placard on her front door saying “Recall Whitmer,” a right-wing missive to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who has had to lockdown businesses and schools and restrict gatherings to protect citizens from the unchecked spread of the coronavirus, moves that are unpopular with some self-proclaimed Patriots on the right who see only an infringement on their liberties. Earlier this year a plot to kidnap and execute Whitmer and was foiled by state and Federal agents and 13 people were arrested. (this is a good place for a WTF?)

If I didn’t see and hear the news accounts of this I would say it was a plot from a Carl Hiaasen novel. So ridiculous and yet so entertaining, a way to escape reality while lying on the beach listening to the gentle waves of Lake Michigan and the nearly forgotten sounds of summertimes on the left coast of Michigan. 

But it was real. 

That’s the thing. Nothing seems to have prepared us for this coalescing of twin pandemics—one a health pandemic greater than we have ever seen and a similarly toxic and dangerous pandemic of conscience in our government. 

While me and many of my like-minded friends were prepared to sit out the Trump presidency and wait for America to regain its sanity, we were hit with a virus that has taken down the economy and our government just as readily as the lives of more than a quarter of a million people in this country alone. 

I thought I was pretty prepared to deal with the ramifications the governor’s ordered lockdown produced back in March. After all, being more introverted than not, I am perfectly content being alone most of the time. I enjoy my family and a small, a tiny, group of close and carefully chosen comrades (oh watch out I used a leftist phrase!) with which to spend my time. The lockdown freed me from attending meetings and going out into public to meet people and scramble for business. Instead of being exhausted from having to engage in conversations with stranger after stranger, I had a hall pass to focus on my own and my family’s well being, dive into my growing treasured library of philosophy, self-improvement and fiction books, and workout and run all by myself. It feels pretty close to heaven.

But as the days turn to weeks and weeks to months and now, a little more than a month before the calendar turns to a new year, I feel the unrelenting anxiety of a toxic, vile presence in the U.S. White House (“the Peoples’ House”) and a malignant demon in a virus that might strike me or my loved ones at any moment. 

The first time I ever went to Las Vegas and visited the casinos I was immediately aware that something was off. I noticed there were no windows and no clocks. But there was something else that felt…unsettling. It wasn’t until years later that I noticed what I call “The Hum.” If the virus does pass and you happen to go to Vegas to a casino, pay attention. There is a low level, base hum that doesn’t stop. It’s there if you quiet the noise inside you and pay attention. It’s constant. A kind of background presence amid the ringing, chiming and conversation that also is a part of the Vegas casino scene. 

My anxiety is like that. A constant, low-level mal-presence fed perhaps by my fears that America, my beloved ever-changing and resilient America, is falling apart. It’s the same feeling I had when I had cancer inside that I worried was a demon waiting to blow up inside me. 

This is a dumpster fire inside an epidemic inside a nuclear explosion. Or something like that. 

People might laugh off the notion of the importance of established norms in politics and in our government that allow our leaders to govern through some crazy blend of righteousness and compromise, but it’s worked for 244 years. I’ll even grant that what’s considered normal needs to be shoved hard sometimes to avoid complacency and decay. But this? This is a dumpster fire inside an epidemic inside a nuclear explosion. Or something like that. 

I’m all for honoring differing points of view. What has happened is a breakdown of an agreed upon set of rules under which we make change. Now the president won’t acknowlede he lost the election and is refusing to allow for the transition for the new president. 

And, even worse, he appears so caught up in keeping his place in the White House that he is doing nothing to combat the coronavirus. Absolutely no leadership in this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. 

All of the external events are causing an unnerving Vegas-like vibration in my psyche and I have to admit, I’m worse off than I want to be. I noticed this because I seem to have wide swings in my mood. One moment I’m fine. The next I just want to curl up in the fetal position and shut out the world. 

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’
I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

-Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, copyright 1963 Warner Bros. Music

Like I said, I thought I was predisposed to doing pretty well for this type of thing. I work to be aware of the dialogue in my head. I’m relentless about personal growth and about using my mistakes of the past to be better. I’m a process guy, meaning, I’m less focused on outcome. And though I’ve never been an alcoholic, I believe in the notion of 12 steps to control only what I can and that is nothing outside of me. 

I have embraced the Buddhist sense of letting go of attachments to things and endings. I try to express gratitude for what I have and let go of desires for my neighbors’ better things. I embrace kindness in all its forms. 

I also am, most of the time, deliberate about what I read, watch and listen to. I focus on things I believe help me to learn, grow and feel more whole. 

All of the external events are causing an unnerving Vegas-like vibration in my psyche and I have to admit, I’m worse off than I want to be.

And yet I am anxious and scared about what the next decade will bring. Will it be more unrest or even (gulp) civil war? Will many, many more people die before this virus is extinguished like polio was largely eradicated when I was a kid?

I read a piece in The Atlantic magazine that it’s too late for America. We are already the Titanic about to hit the iceberg. We can’t turn. We just have to brace and hope the better of us comes out. 

In the meantime, I’m curling up by this fire and diving into a novel until this storm passes.