From time immemorial the world has existed within conflicts. There always seemed to be two sides, from eating or not eating that blasted apple, to sibling rivalry from Cain and Abel through the children of the forefathers and all the way down through the ages. Even now, we never can seem to agree on any major issue, from the dangers of racism to the climate and its current state of affairs. Worse, rather than try to work out compromises, it appears that humans have a propensity to fight, to struggle, to prove who is the Alpha. Evidently, we have not moved much from the battles of animals as they, too, battle for Alpha position.
Words are powerful weapons in this battle and could serve as the glue to repair the breaks of humanity, but we appear to prefer to use words to singe, to char and sear the human race, to build up scar tissue that prevents the opening of minds and hearts to the positive words of others, words that would allow humanity to move on, to move ahead, to solve world level crises. And so, we stagnate and butt heads and think with our rears.
Charles Baudelaire had it right when he said, "I have felt the wind on the wings of madness." We, too, have felt that wind and that madness and it continues to remain strong. Would that the crazy winds roaring outside would blow away those continued threads of madness, but it does not. We must make a concentrated effort to seek out and tamp down on that madness even as we attempt to include the shattered shreds of once upon Americans into the fold. Hard and necessary work.
However, there are other, conflicting viewpoints. George Eliot asked, "After such knowledge what forgiveness?" A true and hard question. We have gained knowledge that we would have preferred not to have gained, for it is knowledge of the base parts of humanity, of the darkness within, the dregs of animalistic behavior that we have not overcome, and for some, wish never to abandon. It is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness in real life.
How do we forgive those who ripped this nation in two? How do we forget and forgive those who brought up images and memories of hate, of murder? How do we look away from people who dived deeply into the world of Trump Zombies, willingly giving up their own independence and morality, and continue to do so in hardball and unrealistic attempts to negate an election, to actually negate democracy.
We, today, have debts that can only be erased and/or paid for with truth. Voltaire told us that "To the dead we owe only truth" and he is so right. We owe these ancestors of ours the truth as to how we went along with seeds of darkness and destroyed all the progress of mankind, destroyed the fruits of their labors and struggles, spurned their contributions to mankind, reversing, instead, losing so much.
We owe this same burden or gift of truth to the present and the future. We were told yesterday that it was easier to be a parent the day Biden was pronounced winner, yet how does a parent explain the insane efforts of a man and his enablers, his children, evidently tainted by the same madness of their father, to ignore the facts, to insist on the fairy tale egocentric world of the toddler - if I say it ain't so, it ain't so! Covering one's face with hands as an adult, blocking the eyesight, is not the magic peek a boo of childhood, and we owe the truth, even to the benighted. Having one small person decide that she will not sign a piece of paper allowing the transition process to begin is not the way we pay our debs of truth. Not at all.
We must work with the truth, for falsehood and lies are temporary. There is no way of avoiding the truth. Lady Macbeth found that out and it drove her to madness. Trump people are beginning to realize, and must realize that "All was false and hollow; though his tongue dropped manna." (Milton, Paradise Lost). That manna was not the real deal and it corroded and rotted before our very eyes. The poison of that false manna has nearly broken us, irreparably, but onward we must go, strive, toil and succeed. There is no other way.
We must take heed and inspiration from the words of Charles Dickens. "I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape." That is the path and the guiding words that we, Americans all, must adopt, embrace and believe. If we take the word Alpha and change the p to an o, we have Aloha, a word of welcome, a word that joins us to a family, a word of peace. Let us do that. Let us clean up our act, let us remove the stains of the past four years, learn from what has happened, trust to the truth, and become Ohana, family, the family of Americans, open to all who wish for and believe in the principles of our country, who will strive to achieve them, to spread them to humanity - to become a piece of America.
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