What we’re doing and why…

Here’s a bulletin.  Life can be hard sometimes.  

Obviously, injuries, disease, financial struggles etc would probably top most peoples’ list of why life can be hard sometimes.  No doubt some people struggle more than others, and some people seem to be on a mission to make as many people struggle as possible.  Of the $77 million people who voted for trump, my guess is 76,999,268 of them will have harder lives because of their insane vote..a vote that dooms almost all of us to a worse life than we had just a month or so ago.

For me, life has gotten really hard…not because of illness, disease, or financial struggles.  You see, I have had to explain to my children the extent to which I am broken.  I can’t rave enough about how hard all of my children have worked to build solid lives.  I was never able to give them much economic support, but if they complained about it, they did it out of my earshot.  I know they are a lot more proud of what they have built because THEY built it.  None of them were born on third base.

Now that I am out of the classroom, there’s an emptiness in my life that I cannot find a way to fill.  I want to write a heartfelt apology to all of the students I might have had this year because I know I should be there helping them make sense of what is crumbling around them.  I don’t know how much I could help.  I suppose there’s a limit to the number of times I could point to my back wall and recite Shelly’s “Ozymandias” to them.  If you don’t know this poem, I’ve included it here.  

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Those fans of “Breaking Bad” will recognize this from the final episode of that show as Walter White’s famous hat lies in the sands of a New Mexico dessert.  Ozymandias, the Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II,  built a great empire along with this statue warning any enemies of Egypt that it was pointless to oppose him. Like Walter White, however, Ozymandias dies and the empires they built crumbled into the sand.

I used this poem every year I taught history or politics to remind students…especially American students…that ALL empires fail.  It is truly the only constant in all of world history…and it will happen here too.  Hell, it’s already clearly happening here.

This time it will be trump’s frown, wrinkled lip, and  sneer of cold command lying in the sand that will epitomize what he and his puppeteers have brought to our shores.

But I digress.

Over the past couple of months I have been unable to shake the funk brought on by the decision of ill-informed, lazy, and mean-spirited Americans who handed a racist, rapist, felon conman the keys to the kingdom.  Since November, life has been hard.

At a younger age I saw myself as a front line fighter.  At 70, (yes, 70!) I see myself as an emasculated human who spent so much of my life trying to promote agendas of peace, understanding, critical thinking, and respect for all humans.  Through Model United Nations programs, which I helped run for over 50 years in Michigan and elsewhere, I really thought what the students were learning would make a genuine difference.  Through teaching, I hoped to bring a sense of empowerment to those who don’t see themselves as having much, so that they could realize their critical role in our democracy.  Maybe I did make a difference, but it sure is hard to see now.

My wife, Lisa, and I had planned long before November to leave the country on an extended trip for which we had saved and planned a very long time.  Our original plan was to spend 10 weeks in Europe, the Middle East, and the Seychelles doing a victory lap for two careers that could be argued gave a lot to a whole lot of young people through teaching, coaching, and genuine concern for their futures.

Since the election, however, all I have been able to do is fret about my own future.  

A couple of days ago, I came upon a short-term solution.  Let’s leave on this 10 week trip and just not come back.  A decision like that is complicated by family connections.  We’ve got five great kids and four great grandchildren that we love like crazy.  Walking away from that is too big an ask, so we decided to extend the 10 weeks to 10 months.  Once we settled on that, it was the very first time since November that I felt any peace in my soul.  I finished booking all the flights a little while ago, and February 14th can’t come soon enough.

That was the easy part.

Explaining my surrender to the forces of evil to my children was the hard part.  In many ways, I truly am surrendering.  I see myself as powerless while at the same time I see people in power fuck it up. This  makes things worse.  When I see newly elected Senator Elissa Slotkin voting to confirm some of the most incompetent, evil appointees in American history, my despair deepens.  If the people in power who are allegedly on the side of democracy refuse to fight, what hope does a broken down ex-teacher have?

Those of you who know my children are aware that we are a pretty competitive lot.  Teaching my kids to fight for their beliefs was my mission from day one.  There are a lot of stories I could tell about how that challenged them and how it probably helped them, but I’m already over my normal word limit…maybe another day.

For me to sit here now and say I’m giving up and leaving the country is not what I ever thought I would do.  I know my children are doing their best to cut me some slack, but I also know they are not proud of me today.

In the end I hope that sometime between now and the end of 2025 I will find my spirit again by being abroad and mixing with people who don’t have to admit to others that trump is their president.  (In this country there are three groups of people: those happy they elected trump, those so shocked they can barely function, and those who don’t give a shit. It’s this last group who is really to blame for our predicament.)

Somewhere in my broken spirit I am searching for hope that we will return to the United States at the start of 2026 ready and eager to help kick some ass in the mid-term elections. Because 2026 is truly the last stand for democracy (if there’s enough of it left to even hold an election.)

Sounds like at least a vestige of hope to me…