The Unfortunate but Not Unexpected End of Another Search for the Guilty

This is from a long time ago, reckoning as Honest Abe once did in scores of years, but I found it the other day and was startled how little has changed since then to now. See for yourself.

I watched a TV commercial for an online bank with a grown-up and two little girls of less than five years of age. He asks the first one if she would like a pony, and when the child eagerly says 'yes’ he gives her a small pony replica. Smiles all around.

He asks the other little girl if she, too, would like a pony and when she responds in the affirmative, he makes a 'chck-chck' sound, and from behind this large dollhouse ambles a real pony, bridle, and saddle. The child is delighted.

The first child not so much. We get some close-ups of her face as we hear the squeals of delight from the other little girl. Eventually, she screws up the courage to tell the grown-up very non-judgmentally for a child who just got double-crossed 'you didn't say I could have a real pony.' To which he quickly rejoins, 'you didn't ask.'

Sometimes I expect to see the streets of America littered with plastic pony replicas and am surprised that I don’t. We are the most relentlessly optimistic nation on earth, perhaps unrealistically optimistic. I grew up in a USA that liked Ike, grudgingly extended sort-of equal rights to everyone, went, in one generation from a chicken in every pot to two cars in every garage, and which now finds itself, angry with one another and looking for (and finding) scapegoats.

I’m not worried that we can't fix what doesn't work, politically, socially, morally, legally, because our history tells me we have in the past and will again. But will we choose to repair ourselves? We've conspicuously consumed just about everything this planet has to offer and its riches haven't come close to filling that hole in our hearts.

We've conditioned ourselves to find solutions in fifteen second or less increments and ideas like universal health care, climate change, economic reinvestment, or diversity, equality, and inclusion can’t be jammed between the blue mountains of a beer can commercial and the soft porn of a shaving cream advertisement. It's not just that we lose interest-we never had any. Our technology allows us to have 24/7/365 access to the information we want to hear rather than what we need to hear.

We’ve plunged recklessly and relentlessly ahead; the devil takes the hindmost because we’ve always been about winning at all costs because when you’re a winner the good times go on forever. Until, of course, they don’t.  

COVID-19 and its aftermath changed and rearranged every aspect of our world with those closest to the ground and with the most to lose suffering the greatest losses despite lawn signs that read ‘thank you essential workers,’ or those organized nightly applause of gratitude and glib reassurances that ‘we’re all in this together.’

Too many have been left flopping and twitching on the beach as the tide of prosperity rushed out and no one warned us about the undertow. Except, of course, we were warned, but we chose to neither hear nor listen.
-bill kenny