From Indignation to Action

To be honest, I think Zadie and I could have been content to leave Tokyo today. Feels like we’ve reached the end of “attractions” and while it was briefly exciting to see snow flurries today, it doesn’t exactly entice us to wander the parks. Today I did go out to find a Japanese Inn (Ryokan) I stayed in some 10 years ago while Zadie stayed back, and lo and behold, I found it! The area near Nezu station has a more down-home community-feel and the Ryokan itself is lovely, as was the man who greeted me. I had the inspired idea of spending our last night tomorrow night there, but alas! they were full. 

 

When I got back late afternoon, I got Zadie mobilized to search out dinner in the Asakusa neighborhood two subway stops away. We found a quaint little shopping area with many restaurant choices. Including a gift shop where she bought little gifts— well, I bought little gifts!— for two of her friends and we had our first ice cream of the trip on the coldest night of the trip. Green tea ice cream of course. Then back home for four spirited rounds of our nightly Rummy 500 game, taking turns jumping ahead and falling back. 

 

This whole trip I’ve been connected, like it or not, to the drama back home, and after reading more Facebook expressions of outrage over the latest depiction of the Obamas, I felt compelled to chime in. Nothing earthshaking, but hopefully worth saying out loud. Here it is below: 

 

I think it might be worthwhile to express your disgust on social media at what the current regime says, does, thinks, excuses. The racist Obama clip, the ICE murders, the Orange-Man in an interview wondering why people were upset because it was only 2 people murdered while thousands were allowed to stay alive, the latest Epstein revelations— need I go on?

 

But really, why is anybody surprised? If we don’t know by now what to expect, it would seem like some naïve notion that these people actually mean well but have just made a few mistakes. We know exactly who they, who their supporters are, who their enablers are, and nothing they are doing should surprise us. We none of us could believe it get any lower and that was some one or two hundred “lowers’ ago. 

 

Yet they are all on the losing side of history and the world is waking up to it. JD Vance booed at the Italian Olympics, Bad Bunny at the Superbowl, Kennedy Center closing down from artists’ refusal to comply.. And most inspiring, “red” communities in Virginia, Maryland, Arizona, Missouri, Texas, Georgia, New Hampshire, New Jersey and more going to the streets and town halls to prevent the next ICE Prison Camps being built in their town, (see this remarkable report by Rachel Maddow. Worth every second of the 30 minutes.) https://youtu.be/Hjimit-HvWg

 

It’s happening, people! So instead of using our voice to express our next outrage, let’s shift our reaction from righteous indignation to action. Let’s organize, keep the momentum going, get the people out to the town halls and to the streets, keep up the general strikes and make the upcoming No Kings Rally double the size of what already was the largest protest in American history. Keep the stories coming of people’s thousand acts of resistance, share ideas, offer support. We can do this! Not as soon as we would like nor as widespread as we would hope for, but one small victory at a time that rebuilds the moral backbone of our crippled country. And as the old jazz tune suggests, “side by side.”