I remember, when I was about 14, that play among myself, and two cousins, got out of hand. You might think it nothing. But I remember how I felt at the time, that something was off kilter, out of control if you will. I remember the fear and frustration I felt that nothing I could say, no cajoling, or logical argument about the cruelty (small in terms of the world at large, but terrifyingly real to me at the time) would have an impact on their laughter. They didn't do anything cosmically horrible except to take my glasses (I was profoundly nearsighted) and throw them back and forth out of my reach taunting me with each toss. They knew my mother. If those glasses broke in the course of this "game", my mother would not have blamed them, but me. And yet, I, the elder of the three of us was unable to interdict the escalating craziness.
Another childhood memory pops to mind. I went with another cousin of mine to a playground near our apartments where you could play handball or paddleball. Basically, there was a large concrete wall, and kids could pound their Spauldings against it on opposite sides. Usually if your ball went over to the other side of the wall, someone would throw it back. But one day, my cousin caused her ball to go to the other side and it did not come back. I was the elder here again, so I went to the other side of the wall and saw that one of the girls, older than I, and larger than I, was mockingly withholding the ball. I asked for it back. The next thing I remember is that several of her friends had to be held back from hitting me. I can't remember if we got the ball back. I do know we got out of there.
What could these tales possibly have to do with our nation? There was a time of orderliness, if you will, in our society. Perhaps things were too rigid. Yes, in some ways, they were. There were lots of rules from written ones about spitting on the street and unwritten ones about how you dressed and what things were proper to talk about in polite company. It was all very "either/or". There was a strong frame on behavior in public, and even in private. Children like myself and my cousins knew the consequence for breaking rules. They occasionally broke them, of course, and engaged in what would be called bullying behavior, but they knew they could be sanctioned, if they got caught. They grew up and learned well the rules of public and private discourse. In conversation or behavior, there were just some things beyond the pale. They just didn't happen.
My father was prescient, I realize in retrospect. In the late 1960s, he was prophesying the end of our nation, the end of the social contract based upon an idea of Judeo-Christian morality. He was decrying children who did not learn to control their impulses, who grew into adults who did not control their impulses. I still followed the rules, of course, but like everyone of my generation, I mostly pooh-poohed his agitated concern.
My father has been dead eight years, but even before he died, I began to inherit his feeling about the direction of an America I no longer recognized. It had been an imperfect union, to be sure, but always seeking perfection based upon foundational values of liberty and the embracing of all immigrants who sought to join those values under the protection of a just God.
That billboard pictured at the beginning of this entry? There have been others that jolted me, that stand for me as an illustration of the demeaning of ordinary life in our country. I can read on some billboards about the varying sexually transmitted diseases that I might contract if I have unsafe relations. I can see a tee shirt worn by a teenager on the street that doesn't blank out the uc and the k of the word pointedly "obscured" on the billboard. Life then must be good, right? Don't like it? Too bad.
"Fxxk the tux" is emblematic of a society devolving. The Presidential debates, primaries and caucuses seema great deal to me like that paddle ball court of my childhood, a penultimate culmination of a diseased liberation from faith and reason. We aren't quite up to crucifixions, like our brethren in the Middle East, but we are well on the way to that particular frenzy. Now, speech is offensive and your career can be demolished and your reputation. Soon, your very tongue will be in jeopardy. Don't think so? History books are replete with tales of societies that doubted the reality of the fall of civilizations.
God help us! It is a good thing His Love is unconditional.
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