Here's a hunch:
If we don't understand the nature of alienation, and its causes, we don't understand much of what happens around us in this troubled time in the United States.
And if we don't understand those things, we surely don't have a good shot at understanding healing.
And that would seem to leave us only one option. Seize power and muscle through.
And surely that's part of the root cause of alienation, so in the long run that won't be a good enough answer, will it?
Below is a note I wrote about access to health care in 2017, early in the first Trump term in office. Rereading it today, my thought is this:
If journalism today is a broken-down ghost of its old self, and if activism is still finding its footing, then inside-the-beltway activities of the party in power may or may not get around to the kidnapping and killing, but their activities will often be carried out in some degree of darkness and will very likely rob people of their lives and inspire terror among the people.
Here is the 2017 posting:
Death squads work under cover of darkness, kidnapping and killing, robbing people of their lives and inspiring terror among the people.
Death panels have official sanction to take or ruin lives. They meet in government buildings with Orwellian agendas posted at the door.
I had thought that the Senate committee crafting the new health care bill was a death panel.
But to the degree that citizens are demoralized, broken in spirit, by a new health care law, I was wrong.
The Senate committee is a death squad, operating in darkness, stealing people’s lives, spreading fear and destruction across the land.
Or so it seems today.