Look, you didn’t get here because things were easy. We, we like to think the many of us, all may sit like a fat robin a yard from the full feeder in the sun on a perch of relative ease looking over the past and the future as if they were academic exercises in an animated chess game. Best we don’t fool ourselves.
We all already know better anyway. It’s just that we’d all like to put the “know-better” on the back burner, or maybe way back in the dark corners of shelves underneath the stovetop. Maybe the basement pantry, whether the light fixture needs replacement, and the old fangled incandescent light bulb burns dim, and smokes dust every time you turn it on, would be even better.
I guess we figure that “know-better” is like pickled cabbage or canned vegetarian chili. We can put that know better with our survival stores and pull it out just when we need it.
OK, then let’s take out that jar of pickled “know-better” and look through the glass and surmise as to how well it has aged. We won’t taste it yet, we might be distracted as to how vivid the tang has gotten, and how bitter the once sweeter amphibious roots have turned. Not too much at once. Don’t wanna get the bends, or rapture of the deep too right quick, now.
We’ll just take a look. We’ll have to stop our democratizing and go have a scout. Say Western Wisconsin, the town of Hudson, at the battle edge between Minneapolis and the farms several countries, though only a few counties, away from there. You’d first have to take a look at how packed the Calvary Baptist Church is on a Sunday and listen carefully to the preaching about the government’s plan to vaccine you to death, that there is no difference between the Rapture and the coming Civil War, and the fact that the media, in its unofficial capacity as the New World Order, told you that your votes were not stolen away. You know better.
After you exited that church, on a fine sunny morning, you’d look at the parishioners who might be thinking of the night fires you could see all the way from Minneapolis during the riots of the Summer of 21. You might even feel sorry for George Floyd, but you’ve got a family. And your family’s got family. And those folks have friends that aren’t faring too well in this New World Order. For that reason, you have made a number of prudent investments.
Things are tight. But you’ve got more rounds of ammunition than you have dollars in the bank, and that is some comfort. Though prepping, well it’s a thing you can’t do too much of. Thankfully, all your neighbors are of the same mind, and there is strength in numbers, you know. Especially in secret, especially on the down low. It’s come down to a battle between good and evil, and you know which side you are on. It would be foolish not to see things clearly, not to see things in black and white. That’s just what they want you to do. You know better.
I’ll let you get a breath. Like I said, you didn’t come from easy. And that’s not where you are going. If an angry child has a loaded gun in a classroom or your living room, it is no time to talk redistribution of the wealth, climate change, or gender identity. I’m sorry, but let’s get our priorities straight. Be who you wanna be — but attend to the elephant-in-the-room presenting problem first.
So, you’ve got to talk that child down. Let them know that they are safe, and that all their frustrations will be redressed, even if that’s not true. Ask a police negotiator, they’ll tell you that meaning is more important than substance.
Are we ready to open that pickle jar yet? Get some superpowers from the acerbic stew of “know-better” that we have let ferment for too far long. We have to give something up, and that might just be our own cherished beliefs that “E Pluribus Unum” was going somewhere. Well, we are at that where, and that where is beyond the easy now.
We have to do the very hard work of putting understanding first, and our ideals back into the dark of the pantry, for now. We’ve got to give everyone a place at the table, and remind all each other, with our demeanor, not our words, that this is Thanksgiving, and we’re in it together. Amen.