Off the Cuff

I am writing this entirely off the cuff. I don’t know where it will go, which is not the way I normally write, at least not for anything I’d post. But, of course, I may well choose not to post it. So no risk. It may just be a draft to nowhere.

And even if it is posted, the thirty or so folks signed up for my stack are probably not enough to stage a revolution. Worst case, boredom.

July 4th. Never meant a lot to me. And yet, like so many, I grieve for the country in which I thought I lived. I don’t think I’m naive. I was an American history major at one of the universities now being assaulted by our current regime. Maybe the place most assaulted because it has more “star power” than the Sociopath ever will. Anyway, I did not idealize America. But I was glad I lived here.

I happened to see a Youtube today in which some country-western guy whom I never heard of was singing something called, “Make America Great Again.” It was not much a song, and he was not much of a singer. But what struck me was the imagery stuck in the music video. Along with the usual cowboys and fruited plains (I don’t think a woman or Native American or Asian sappeared in the entire video), there were occasional images of black people—MLK, DuBois, Michael Jordan, and I think a few others. I wasn’t sure what they were meant to represent. Where they part of the “Great America” to come? Or were they part of the problem? I got no sense from the video whether they were to be cherished or swept away. Indeed, whether they were even considered American. There was a brief image of Einstein too. Which I’m guessing would either have amused or revulsed him. Or both.

So here we are. In revulsion. Tonight I will perform an online play of mine that depicts the story of the kind of “regular guy” who, against his inclinations, is drawn into our political realities. Early on, he tells us, “I’m not political. Mostly I support the Yankees.” But when a beloved Venezuelan co-worker , born in the U.S. with full citizenship, is disappeared things become more complex. Even more when his niece, a nurse who worked at the VA, is abruptly fired like so many other federal workers, things become more heart-breaking for him. Alexa helped him get through his wife’s dying from cancer. And suddenly she, like his co-worker, are swept away. He realizes we are all vulnerable. They will try to do what they want. No one is immune. And, in the end, he concludes what everything in him does not want to conclude:

“I went into the bathroom. I looked in the mirror. And I said, as quietly as I could, we are at war.”