Vox Populi? Or Will We Be the Vanishing Frog at Tinker Creek?

                             

The U.S. presidential election is only weeks away, the President has tested positive for Covid, a new Supreme Court nominee has been selected, and this country could not be more divided in her choice for the next leader of the country. The people have bitterly chosen sides with a brash disheartening disdain for the "other." No longer seen together as fellow Americans, citizens engage in the basest of insults, name calling, and mud slinging. One side looks primarily at the financial end of solving the nation's woes and the other focuses on the unification of the populous with all its basic needs before any other issues are addressed. Can we heal the wounds, repair the ever widening crack in our union before it is too late? Will we be like the frog slowly devoured alive by the giant water bug in Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? The frog sits motionless in the creek, the spirit vanishing from his eyes as he begins to deflate, seized by a vicious bite that slowly reduces the frog to a juice.

It's a horrific description and probably too scary to imagine metaphorically happening to Americans, but perhaps we need a good kick in the pants.

What can unite us? I suggest we look deeper into ourselves, past the politics and rantings spewed from both sides of the party and the media, to find that crux, the pivotal point of every human being's most critical need. What is far greater than simply the current prevailing mood of the people, the definition of the Latin vox populi, is the ultimate vox populi--the need to be respected and acknowledged as a human being worthy of life on the planet.

Whether or not you belong to or support any of the cultural, political, or socio-economic groups in the United States, the fact remains that we all something in common, and that something is the force that drives our deepest and most desperately important actions. Peel back the layers of anyone, no matter how you feel about him or her, and you have the same need to be recognized as having a life that matters. Deep down, the blue collar worker trying to support his or her family wants to be able to work and make a decent living that can afford the kind of life that is substantive. Who doesn't want the same thing? Food, shelter, clothing--the basic needs to sustain a life, and perhaps a little more for the miscellaneous extras we love, are important to all of us. Those who were born into wealth or who have achieved it through smart choices or working hard can easily say there but for the grace of God go I.  Yet the fortunate want the same things that those who are less fortunate want.

And then there are the more radical groups who get plenty of media attention and raise havoc with the general public as well as politicians--white supremacists for example. Despite the fact that our nation has spent the last 150 years trying to equalize the races, the truth is there are still people out there who need to feel superior to others and will fight for it. You may not agree with their beliefs or their modus operandi, but even those who deem themselves superior because they are white want to have jobs to support themselves and their families. Their desire to harm others with their beliefs and their behavior may actually have taken root from their belief that their own lives matter more than people of a different race or religious belief. Those are deep issues of fear that one can only hope can be resolved in time. Maslow's hierarchy of needs not only continues to apply to all human beings today; it also propels us into serious action with every breath we take:

To go hungry every night, to be homeless, to want for the basic necessities of life, including medical care are blatantly symptomatic of the position too often held that some lives don't matter. 

Unfortunately, the real vox populi is too often drowned out by the din of the somewhat obsolete chords of the American Dream that once promoted the idea of wealth for all--work hard and you, too, can have a better life than your parents. According to the NY Times, the richest one per cent in the United States now own more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. My guess is that isn't going to change any time soon, so what does that mean for the ninety percent of Americans who simply want to have enough so that their lives still matter?

God bless the houses of worship and the food banks and organizations whose sole purpose is to help those in need, but is it enough? Has it ever really been enough? Dominic Rushe of The Guardian wrote, "Inequality was a pre-existing condition long before the coronavirus started its spread." This American mythology of the potential wealth-for-all must be shattered now. Every person in the United States matters enough to ensure that all who want to work can, that no one goes hungry, and no one suffers because of a lack of medical care. All lives matter, not just the top one percent, and this is far from the much feared and repudiated idea of socialism. It's the United States raison d'etre: united we stand and equality and justice for ALL.