Who We Are.
Observations of Hard Times
June 18, 2025
“It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.” (Charles Dickens, Hard Times)
This morning I sat down to write with a heavy heart and a sense of dread about the current state of our country. Not one to stay stuck on the down side of life, I then thought about what we could each do to help lift the tenor of both conversation and actions. Many, including myself, have written and spoken about what we can do to cope with difficult times, but we also need to remind ourselves of what our struggles are about. So for that purpose I’m writing about what I believe we need to focus on and how we need to move through this stormy time. While this political and philosophical storm is upsetting and debilitating to many of us, it may just be the thing that wakes more of us up about the danger and threat that we face. And with that in mind, it might shift us out of any complacency, despair, or sense of hopelessness we might be stuck in.
It’s normal to fall into those dark places at times, but it is unhealthy, unwise, and dangerous to stay there. Ambivalence leads to a loss of power and a loss of a sense that anything can be done to change things. Hopelessness, spits in the face of all those who’ve sacrificed, served, and continue to serve to work for our more perfect union. Fear is debilitating and paralyzes us. Anger divides and closes us down. We cannot stop ourselves from feeling any or all of these emotions, however we cannot stay stuck in that mode. We have to look deeper into who we are as individuals and as a nation. We are both, and there is room in our world for both, but we must remind ourselves of what it was that the generations who’ve come before have worked hard to maintain, and what we, as those who are living now must do to insure the future for our posterity, our children, grandchildren, and those generations yet to come.
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Much has been written and said about how to cope during challenging times. In fact, every generation lives through some hard times, as Charles Dickens’ describes in Hard Times. Hard Times is a book he wrote in serial form for a magazine and then published in 1854 in London. Having lived through eight decades, I have witnessed many difficult times and challenging experiences, both personally and in the world at large. Born directly after WWII, discussions and evidence of the dichotomy between war and peace, have been ever present throughout my life. Nothing has been more disruptive, horrifying, or overwhelming however than the last ten years of the reign of terror that has infected our country. The changes that have been brought about by ‘normalizing’ racism, misogyny, inequity, lying and other distortions of reality is unparalleled in this country. The divisive and hateful ideas that have been allowed and even encouraged to come up out of the darkest places in the souls of some, have done so much harm and have made a mockery of sound ethical and religious precepts.
Those kinds of changes are not, however, unparalleled in other countries, including Germany during Hitler’s reign of terror, Putin’s Russia, or other totalitarian dictatorships who have forced their fanatical ideologies on the people they were meant to govern. We live in a democratic republic, or at least that’s what our Constitution defines us as. Yet we are witnessing and demonstrating against a group of people who have been mobilized by Trump and his gang, to take our country to the lowest depths of our entire history. People, documented and not, being rounded up like criminals, kidnapped and subjected to torture, starvation, and imprisonment without due process. Kept in third world country prisons where the only way out is ‘in a coffin’. Political assassinations, attacks and terrible treatment of members of Congress, our judiciary. Congress members who are so afraid of the President that they won’t speak in public for fear they’ll be ‘primaried’ because he doesn’t like them. This has been going on now, for far too long.
We, humans, are fallible, that’s true. Most of us however are trying to do the right thing and are offended when we are categorized in ways to devalue, degrade, or dismiss who we are. We have a contract with one another, that calls for us to respect and honor the rights and value of one another. However we seem to have gotten lost in the rhetoric, vile assaults, and blurred vision of those who view us as evil or who use hate as a weapon because of their distaste for our looks, our history, our families, or our beliefs (even when many attack us without having any idea what we believe). So let’s take a look at what our founding principles are based on, the core of who we are and how we are meant to try to get along. And I believe, it’s time for us to put ourselves, if only for a while, in the other person’s shoes and see what it must be like to look at the world through their eyes, to walk a mile in their shoes. We believe we know who we are, but do we have any idea what others experience?
Imagine you or your family member is ‘accidentally’ captured by masked men with guns, taken to another country, and left there in a prison for a month or so. What would you do? What could you do? What would you do if your Social Security check were no longer coming to you monthly? Or if your medical insurance was taken from you? What would you do if your food budget was cut in half, or if you could no longer afford to pay for car insurance, gasoline, or car repairs. What would you do if your parents or elderly grandparents were suddenly without their social security and healthcare? Are you in a position to take care of them? Most of us are not, but many of us are facing just such threats by the current Republican administration.
Imagine you’re a farmer or rancher, who now cannot grow or afford to buy the wheat or corn to feed your animals. Imagine losing contracts with long-time clients in Canada or Mexico because of tariffs. Imagine what it must be like to have built up a business over years, only to be told you’re going to have to pay higher prices for your goods because someone didn’t understand what a tariff actually is? Imagine losing your medical insurance so a billionaire could make more money? Imagine losing our public lands because the billionaires need to make more money by selling off our land, mineral rights, water, and other natural resources? Imagine our environment going back to having to cut through pollution so thick you could cut it with a knife and couldn’t see across the road. Imagine a polio or tetanus or diphtheria epidemic because of lack of research, medications, and vaccines? All of these are possibilities now.
What would you do if your husband, an undocumented worker who is regularly checking in with immigration, trying to maintain his legal status, was grabbed by ICE outside the courthouse where he went to check in as usual? He’s gone now, and you have no idea where he is? What would you do if you were in the foster care system, and because your parents were refugees, asylees, or undocumented people, you are taken from foster care and shipped back to your parent’s country of origin? You’d never been there, but as a child (because only children are in the foster care system) of an undocumented person, you’re sent to a country completely unfamiliar to you. A country where you have no family, no money, no job, no shelter, and no access to anything because you don’t even speak the language? Or perhaps, like some, you’re just willy nilly sent to ‘any other country’ including the Congo where there is an ebola outbreak? You’re left in a container in the heat with no food or water? This is what is going on.
If you think any of this is farfetched, think again, because this and other evil and heartless acts are being committed by the current federal government. Many people who live and work in this country are facing and many have already experienced exactly these kinds of things, and worse. Young men and women unable to afford their asthma inhalers are dying because they have no healthcare and can’t afford their medications. Additionally, most of us are having more sleepless nights, nightmares, and often live in fear and under threat of perhaps being called back to active duty to fight in a war that no one wants, or almost as bad or worse, being called to patrol the streets of a large city in our own country, told we’re to grab people off the street or shoot rubber bullets at our own fellow country members? Watching the police in Los Angeles shoot a woman and then rough her up when she tried to get up and tell them she was just trying to go home, well that’s well beyond the pale. A veteran was also stopped and put in handcuffs when he showed up at the VA to collect his monthly check.
Why? Because we’ve become like a third world country living under the dictatorial rule and threat of an authoritarian tyrant. And we’ve become neighbor pitted against neighbor seemingly over vastly different political views…and if you say politics doesn’t matter, think again. Politics are based on the values, beliefs, tenets and laws, and the underlying unifying documents that define our country and define who we are.
“We, the people” doesn’t leave anyone out.
"In order to form a more perfect union” means we are united, in agreement on these principles and we are dedicated to working on perfecting that union, that mutually uniting set of beliefs and laws.
‘Of the United States, establish Justice.” Justice is the quality that includes fairness, equality, and a code of moral behavior associated with administering laws and providing an impartial resolution of conflicts through a system of courts and legal procedures.
“Ensure domestic tranquility” means to make sure we keep peace with one another as we live in the same country.
“Provide for the common defense” means that the federal government is responsible for keeping us safe from enemies both foreign and domestic. By the way, those who defend our country and try to keep us safe, have said that domestic terrorism is a bigger threat than it has ever been.
“Promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our posterity” means our Constitutional guarantees our right to have our government protect our rights and freedoms achieved. Those rights and freedoms are guaranteed through the American Revolution for our generation and all the generations that follow us.
Briefly, the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States of America sets out the design of our country and its governing bodies. And many of us memorized this in elementary school, but it is something we need to remind ourselves of regularly so that we remember what our obligations are to our country and to one another. When we feel like distancing ourselves from the societal commitment to seek justice, equality, domestic tranquility/peace, we must wake ourselves up and participate in helping in the ongoing formation of our more perfect union.
Perfection is not just an end goal; it is a way of living out our belief that we can live together in a union. Friends of mine left the country when they saw the writing on the wall, and I do not hold anything against them. Indeed, I have thanked God on many occasions that they did what they needed to do to protect themselves. Both are people who would find themselves under threat if they were living here now. One, a Venezuelan and the other Mexican-American, would have faced issues that those of us who are not people of color wouldn’t. I know as one who has been married to an Arab national, that we are not all treated alike. He spent four and a half hours at immigration being questioned when he last came to the US ten years ago. He was held at gunpoint by a LAPD while he was on his way to class at USC decades ago. Friends have been stopped and arrested for ‘looking’ like someone the police or ICE were trying to find.
However, tyrants and tyranny don’t stop at one door’ they find ‘enemies’ everywhere because they’ve lost sight of the fact that we are a country ruled by laws, where justice, freedom, liberty, and tranquility are goals and guarantees. We have the right to due process, no matter who we are. We have the right to be treated fairly, no matter who we are. We have the right to seek happiness, have a job, get healthcare, eat, and have a roof over our heads, and we have enough to do, each of us, so that we don’t have time or patience for refighting the American Revolution. We fought the wars that gave us independence. We fought and won the wars that freed us from a world of fascism. we fought for our rights as women and are not going to put up with having them taken away from us. We won’t stop holding these truths to be self-evident and we won’t stop working to make sure we ALL have those rights and the liberty to live freely.
