Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
In the last couple weeks, spring seed catalogs have been starting to appear in the mailbox. This is usually the time to start thinking about spring and planning the garden, but it’s the middle of winter. Nights are long, cold, and bleak. Imagining a green and bountiful backyard and bushel baskets full of fresh vegetables seems to be only a distant memory of a green and pleasant land.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a celebration of the man who defined hope and a dream for unity in this country, and who pointed us toward a direction of peaceful change, falls on Monday this week. Yet today, the celebrations seem hollow; the fight for racial equity in this country has made pathetically little progress since King’s time.
Later in the week, the Senate will vote on The Fair Voting Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Unfortunately, these bills, along with President Biden’s comprehensive Build Back Better Act, seem unlikely to pass. The gridlock in the United States Congress has been profound and chronic. Thanks to the filibuster rule requiring a supermajority, nothing ever seems likely to pass. Our representative government seems to be caught in a downward spiral of government representing the monied elite.
And, finally, after two years, the Covid-19 epidemic, while somewhat controlled, is hardly contained. While percentages of death rates are down, new cases are at an all-time high. A significant portion of the populace, refusing to acknowledge the viability and efficacy of the science behind the vaccines, remain unvaccinated—and so the virus contains to spread—and mutate. Many cities are re-enacting indoor mandatory mask mandates, just as they did during the quarantine. Because of the recent outbreak of the Omicron variant, schools have gone virtual, supply lines continue to be disrupted, and normal life continues to remain only a fading memory.
The holidays were once again abridged and abbreviated. Travel has become increasingly difficult—a record number of flights were cancelled because of Covid. Family get-togethers were still risky. People are still dying. We feel helpless because we are mired in the muck of ignorance. Despite the vaccines, social distancing, and the other precautions, we are still in the grip of one of the worst pandemics in world history.
We are mired in quicksand, unable to move forward. This inertia is caused partly by deliberate political policy, partly by ignorance and stubbornness, and partly by ennui, exhaustion, and frustration. Everyone is sick of being stuck, and tired of endlessly waiting for things to get better—or even back to normal. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is typically a cause for celebration, a reason for Americans to honor the man’s dream of equality and justice for all. Yet these pretty dreams remain only dreams. The African American population in this country still suffers discrimination and unfair treatment from the police, the workplace, the education and medical communities, as well as still being mired in numbing poverty. Even the progress made in policing reforms, affirmative action, and the war on poverty has had little effect on the problem. America is still stuck in the quicksand of racism and hatred. The prevalence and rejuvenation of white supremacist groups, particularly in the Trump area, is evidence on the underlying and undying streak of racism in America. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it.
Representatives of the Democratic Party have promised that the Voting Fairness Act and The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act will be voted on next week. These bills are designed to curtail state legislation that limits accessibility to the polls. However, no Republicans will vote for it, and two Democrats will oppose changing the filibuster rule, which in effect kills the bill. The bills don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing because Congress is paralyzed by the moronic stubbornness of two of its members (although the insipid apathy of the Republicans must not be forgotten). They are in a position to rule through inaction—and they are frighteningly good at it. As a result, millions of Americans will not be guaranteed the right to vote. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it.
Finally, Covid 19 will not go away. When the quarantine began almost two years ago, no one would have predicted that we would still be reeling from its effects. We have the vaccine, we have the technology, we have the treatments, and we have the know-how. What we don’t have is the common sense to take advantage of these tools. Instead, we remain mired in a media-fueled morass of ignorance, fear, and mistruths that impugn the work of the medical professionals in their efforts to control this disease. And so people continue to die. And there seems to be nothing we can do about it.
Newton’s first law, also known as the law of inertia, states that “an object at rest will stay at rest… unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.” Thus, will objects change movement and direction.
Forces that have been acting upon one immovable object, forces that might herald significant, lasting, and positive change are not moving an object at rest—and that object is the status quo.
It doesn’t have to be this way. In the past, we’ve seen the leadership, the technology, the vision, and the character of the American people address issues like these—and solve them. During the course of our history, these same qualities have galvanized this country into action. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are cases in point; Americans recognized a crisis and responded to it. We’ve been able to change.
Now we are at a pass where we can recognize the problems but seem to be unable to do anything about them—prevented by monied interests and their powerful lobbies. We feel powerless in the face of government gridlock, indelible racism, and determined and willful ignorance. It feels as if the mud is sucking us under.
Yet there is an unbalanced force that can move the immovable object of our present calcification—the will and the need to stride forward—and especially to simply survive. We are that unbalanced force.
This force will—eventually—prevail (as it almost always has), and there will come a time when we recognize that the days will get longer and warmer, spring will come, and that the seeds we plant today will bear fruit.
So, I am going to pick up my seed catalog later today and start planning—and dreaming about—this spring’s garden.
Sources
“Law of Inertia.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/science/law-of-inertia. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.