I just read a ranting and raving entry from my journal on 12/10/20. It was full of anxiety and worry and fear. I had gone down a rabbit hole (what they call doom scrolling now) on Reddit and it scared no – terrorized me. Some red states were trying to overthrow the election and it seemed familiar to me. I felt I was back in a nightmarish memory. The trauma was in my body. I couldn’t quite place the extreme reaction.
Back in 2020, I didn’t realize the marked differences until a friend called and she mentioned how the whole world was going down the tubes and I asked her why? We started talking about politics and I thought we were on the same page about the end of democracy and the unfairness and suddenly after I said something about a civil war looming and a certain somebody inciting violence she said no I don’t think that – I’m talking about the illegitimacy of the election and I said which one? You mean this one? Was she talking about Bush vs. Gore? And after both of us realizing we were living in two different realities it was awkward and we hung up.
In the middle of the night I couldn’t sleep. I felt the unrest and couldn’t console myself. I saw clearly that this was a moment, that we were on a sort of precipice and it felt like the novel 1984 but worse because we also had the Covid crisis. Who would have bought a screenplay of 1984 plus a pandemic thrown in?
Gore would have handled the 9/11 event differently. I believe we would have perhaps asked ourselves why we were attacked. I opine therefore we would not had an Iraq war because that was a farce birthed in machismo and greed. We had no business being there. So many places we arrogantly invaded. And don’t get me started on climate change and how we would have all on this planet been in a better place today.
And then, last night I am reading Violeta by Isabel Allende, always such an historic truth teller with a woman’s story to match. And her description of the political genocide in South America especially of Chile and then seven years of it in Argentina and I realized it was bound to happen again, karmically almost comically right here where I live now.
There’s a total disregard for law and order and rules and civility that would have been unthinkable before. That happened in Argentina in the 70’s too. My family living there had no other choice but to live through the Condor Operation and I was only there for a smidgen of it. I came back to the states and was safe. But now it had followed me here and it is pure satire that time and again my ancestors have had to flee wars, poverty and oppression only to have it all come back to the land of the “free”.
It is unbearable to assume there are no safe harbors or dreams of a better life left. Let’s not let this be repeated and heed it as a warning of how plausible it all actually was.