Will we ever go back to normal?
Is it possible? Once Donald Trump is gone, or buried under an avalanche of Epstein files, will it ever be possible to return to the days of relative sanity and decency – a time when people didn’t lie with impunity, didn’t feel comfortable openly believing incredibly stupid things and didn’t take pride in cruelty?
It would be nice to think there’s a chance. Because I have to tell you, life currently is fairly ridiculous.
I don’t say that as a progressive, or as a Democrat. I say it as a normal human with a working brain.
Some of y’all have lost your minds.
Let’s set aside for a moment the thousands upon thousands of people who still, somehow, believe that Trump isn’t trying to hide the Epstein files because he’s in them. And let’s not worry for a few moments about a sitting president asking the Supreme Court to let him starve hungry Americans. And let’s not even get into the Republicans in Congress being willing to just close up shop for months in order to protect the president from (seemingly) pedophile past.
No, instead, let’s go local. To something far simpler and far more ridiculous.
In a public meeting a couple of weeks ago, a man seated on the Alabama Educational Television Commission said out loud, knowing full well that other people could hear him, that PBS had “made themselves the enemy of what I stand with, and so I do not like them.”
This comment came during a meeting in which the commission was discussing dropping PBS programming from Alabama Public Television – a move that would cost APT millions of dollars and essentially end its relationship with hundreds of schools and tens of thousands young Alabamians.
But I want you to consider that statement made by Les Barnett – that Mr. Rogers, Big Bird and Daniel Tiger are the enemies of what he believes in.
PBS programming has raised multiple generations of American children, taught them the basics of early education, entertained them wholesomely for hours and instilled within them basic empathy and kindness for their fellow humans.
That last part is where, I suspect, Barnett and other conservatives have found PBS to be diametrically opposed to their way of thinking. Because from time to time, PBS programming has shown gay characters, and those characters have been treated the same as other characters. At the same time, the overall programming has maintained a firm “give all people respect and kindness” approach.
APT, ever since a conservative takeover a little more than a decade ago, has found it incredibly hard to swallow that empathetic approach. In 2019, it refused to air an episode of the cartoon “Arthur,” because it featured a gay wedding. And it has sporadically attempted to air – and has aired – programming from highly questionable sources simply because that programming reinforced certain religious beliefs.
They have justified all of this using the false equivalency game that conservatives have mastered: If it’s not OK to air overtly religious programming that incorrectly portrays the principles upon which the country was founded, then it shouldn’t be OK for your “liberal propaganda” to air, either.
When did treating others with dignity and respect, honoring the promises of equality written into our founding documents and promoting kindness become one side of a political argument? And how in the world have you been convinced to argue the other side of that?
Somehow, someway a large number of people have found value in cruelty and meanness. They have attacked diversity and equality and inclusion. They have staked out a political position that says it’s not only OK to pretend certain people don’t exist and deny them equal rights, but it should be the method of operation of government entities.
For all of my life, until roughly a decade ago, America had progressed steadily forward on issues of human rights. Alabama had been dragged along mostly unwillingly. But still, it had made progress.
In the years since, we have regressed in almost every way. From voting rights to equal protections under the law, we have watched as disillusioned white people – scared to death of a more level playing field – have marched us backward until we now sit here and watch as masked government agents kidnap citizens who “look Hispanic” and we’re on the verge of legalizing racial gerrymandering.
It’s a disgusting, ignorant era.
I’d just like for it to be over, and for us to go back to normal soon.
