The Year in Review

Wandering between two worlds, one dead. The other powerless to be born. 

-        Matthew Arnold

 

Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to learn. – Pema Chodron

 

What to make of this most incomprehensible year? It would be easy to wallow in whiny despair, thrashing around in the muck of the ever-lowering pit of human depravity that we seem to have purposely voted for. Where does that get us? It could be tempting to passively accept the unacceptable and naively hope it will all just go away while we escape into Netflix binge-watching. Again, how does that help?

 

In-between is a third possibility. That we will triple and quadruple down on our efforts to turn things around, put the full weight of our shoulders on that moral arc of justice and push that needle to where it belongs, with the full measure of grief joined with an active loving hope, and side-by-side with our fellow neighbors who have found the courage to be compassionate. To do so most effectively, it behooves us to try, against all odds, to understand how this could be. If we still manage to believe in a benevolent universe, what message is it trying to send us? What needs to die, what is trying to be born, what do we need to learn so it can finally go away? 

 

Here are some thoughts to consider.  Donald Trump was put on this earth to gather together into one miserable excuse for a human being just about every flaw and failing that has marked our species forever.  He checks every box of the worst of our toxic ideologies and practices. Like Medusa with his head of orange and living snakes, he can turn some of us into stone and stop all intelligent thinking and caring feelings. Like the evil creatures in fairy tales, he can cast a spell that has us voting against our best interests and everything that we thought was moral and just. Like the monster in the fairy tales who is dealt his death blow from the simple act of beholding his hideous face in the mirror, he is showing us precisely what we have become and who we will continue to be if we don’t make a conscious effort to change. mindlessly carry on our inherited flaws. 

 

First, we need to name what is keeping us from our true form of ravishing beauty and astonishing goodness. This short list below all has scores of accompanying stories about what the monster has done, enabled by those he has held spellbound, and empowered by fellow billionaires and Republicans:

 

• White Supremacy: One word: ICE.

 

• Misogny: Three words: The Epstein Files.

 

• Unchecked Capitalism: Four words: No taxes for billionaires. 

 

• Anti-intellectualism: We are gifted with the power of rational thought, scientific knowledge, historical memory, all of which the Toddler King refuses. Think of “acing the cognitive test” that a 4-year-old could pass, "Frederick Douglass still alive," "the Revolutionary War Air Force," permission for deep ignorance and sheer stupidity to thrive.

 

• Anti-emotional-intelligence: We are gifted with the power to feel things deeply, with empathy, compassion and love at the top of the scale. Name one kind thing this man has ever said. Think of an inarguable diagnosis of narcissistic psychopathology that renders him incapable of imagining the other, everything—from a talk to the Boy Scouts to a Christmas message to the nation, reduced to “ME! ME! ME!”, and his recent odious comments on the murder of a beloved film director. 

 

• Anti-kinesthetic-intelligence: We are gifted with elegant, strong and graceful bodies capable of remarkable expression in the vehicles of dance, gymnastics, sports. Watch him dance, note his diet, and take a look once more at the classic photo from behind of him playing golf. 

 

• Anti-art: We are gifted with the capacity to feel and express great beauty through art. Note the shameless move to use his power to put his name on the Kennedy Center where countless artists now refuse to perform, note the contrast between the hundred-plus musicians who performed at the White House during Obama’s tenure reduced to one—The U.S. Marine Corps band. 

 

We continue to be shocked by each new lowering of the bar in all (and more) of the areas above, but perhaps its purpose is to shake another one, two, three, ten thousand or (dare we hope) ten million (more, please!) spellbound supporters out of their trance and finally say out loud—“Now he has gone too far.” And then vote accordingly. 

 

One way to look at this past year is to focus on that process of awakening. The remarkable turnouts and joyful creativity in the two NO KINGS MARCHES, a few (too few!) Republicans jumping ship, various courts resisting the flaunting of the law, good results in November elections. We cannot pass over the grief of all those innocent fellow humans hurt by the cruel bullies in power, but alongside feeling our empathy and outrage, we can use it as fuel for political strategies that help turn it around. “Don’t mourn- organize!” was the slogan of the old Wobblies, which I would amend to “both/and”—mourn andorganize. 

 

I had intended for this to be my last post of 2025, but here in the midst of a joyful family gathering in a beautiful place, it feels right to refuse evil and ignorance the last word in what personally has been a most hopeful and happy year. Equally wrong to not acknowledge the collective lament that is raining down on us all.  So this my compromise, with hopes to give the last word to our selves of great beauty and astonishing goodness released from the spells. The family slowly awakening, a beautiful day awaits us all.