This morning I was rooting about for something to write about for this week’s column and a cartoon from my favorite tiger and boy combo, Calvin and Hobbes popped up on my Facebook feed. Bill Watterson created this long loved comic strip that ran in a multitude of newspapers for the decade between 1985-1995. The one panel meme had Calvin musing to his friend, “I suppose it all all make sense when we grow up,” to which Hobbes responds, “No doubt.” I wish it was so, Calvin.
What doesn’t make sense to this 64 year old alleged grown up who lived through the Viet Nam war era, the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK, the Civil Rights movement, the Kent State Massacre, and the bombing of the MOVE complex in Philadelphia conducted by the police department, is how we as a society writ large, are not appalled at the daily goings on in the world.at doesn’t make sense is the hypocrisy of the ‘pro life’ movement which values ‘pre-born’ babies, more than living, breathing children who are starving, abused and endangered daily in two places where they should feel the safest, at home and in school.
What doesn’t make sense is the legislators on all levels and of any gender who think that they have the right to tell someone with a uterus what to do with theirs.
What doesn’t make sense is the homophobia and transphobia (albeit, that they should be called by other names) that informs politicians’ desires to invoke laws that punish people for being who they were born to be.
What doesn’t make sense is people’s obsession with what is in the pants of others and with whom they may share those organs.
What doesn’t make sense is people casting aspersions on those who don clothing that is traditionally worn by another gender, for personal reasons or entertainment and then sexualizing it, rather than recognizing that we have been entertained by professionals in plays, movies and television shows who dressed thusly for millennia.
What doesn’t make sense is people claiming that the 2nd Amendment grants them the right to own and carry and use any type of weapon that has the potential for murdering a multitude of victims in one fell swoop.
What doesn’t make sense is the utterance of the three word phrase, ‘thoughts and prayers,’ following yet another mass murder scene. What will it take for those who have the power to create positive change, to just do it? Who has to die for the NRA to loosen its chokehold on our country? If thoughts and prayers were enough, would these massacres happen in houses of worship?
What doesn’t make sense is that after all The Former Guy has done to decimate democracy, an appalling number of people still stand with him and would vote for him again.
What doesn’t make sense is that some of the ‘Back the Blue’ people assaulted ‘the Blue’ at the January 6th Insurrection.
What doesn’t make sense is the people who were at the Capitol on that day, who claim to revere the flag and what it stands for, wielded it as weapon.
What doesn’t make sense is the banning of books that a brashly vocal few find objectionable. I think they forget that when a book is banned, sales soar.
What doesn’t make sense is that the people who are STILL harping on Brittney Griner being ‘a dude,’ who deserved to remain in Russia since after all, ‘he’ broke the law and question why Paul Whelan is remains imprisoned isn’t home instead because BG ‘hates this country. My response is that she is a cis-gender woman, who did what they themselves or someone they know did, use an illegal substance. I questioned if they or their friends belonged in jail as a result. I reminded them that it was either Brittney or no one who would be returning home, since the Russian government saw her as a better bargaining chip. I further reminded them that taking a knee as a form of peaceful protest against injustice was not an affront to our flag, military or country, but a patriotic act.
What doesn’t make sense is the disgusting reality that someone’s worth as a human being is based on the amount of melanin in their skin.
What doesn’t make sense is the insistence on white washing history so people whose ancestors enslaved others won’t feel uncomfortable hearing about it.
What doesn’t make sense is the desperate clinging to power and privilege, white people think they have over Black and Brown people, men think they have over women, adults think they have over children.
What doesn’t make sense is that a religion created around a man who came in peace and left pretty clear instructions to love, has been weaponized.
What doesn’t make sense is people who deny that climate change is real and we, as a human species, have reached a tipping point that will impact survival on our big blue marble. We all breathe the same air and drink the same water.
I want a healthy future for my grandchildren who are now 3 and 1 and for all the children. Maybe by the time Dean and Lucy grow up, it will make sense.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
