We Are Never "All Clear"
The Adults are Not Alright, Part II
For the second time in three days, a bomb threat has forced the evacuation of my children’s school, terrorizing them, and forcing the entire student body, faculty, and staff to walk in the rain to the Middle School where they can sit in the gym and wait for the “All Clear.”
But that’s our chronic illness now; we’re never “in the clear.” Every public foray is a risk. And for those who didn’t see the first post on this situation, the threat is a form of bigotry. There’s no other way to say it: some parents (or maybe just people) in the district are shocked, shocked that one of the school’s teachers is gay, and when the teacher is not at work, they live the life they choose. Get the fainting couches out.
So, again today, my children are being terrorized by an unknown person or people. My two kids are sitting on the floor of a middle school gym, not in class, not learning, not creating or being curious. Instead, they are learning the curriculum we force on our youth with increasing regularity: adults are not to be trusted and are the cause of the societal ills that they care deeply about. Want to read this book? Sorry, banned. Want people to be able to live the life and identity in which they feel most comfortable? Sorry no, instead, let’s remove that pride flag because it is not official (many such people falsely believe the POW/MIA flag is official; it’s not, as it was designed by Newton Heisley for a non-governmental, nonprofit organization). Want action on climate change? Sorry, instead, let us adults seek to humiliate a child, Greta Thunberg, for having the audacity to say she would like a viable world to live in as she ages (Thunberg is 20 now). Want to openly support the Black Lives Matter movement? Instead, millions of American adults opt to regularly deface the American flag, adding different colors and stripes to it, to convey, for one example, how much they love law enforcement instead of people of color. Nothing like seeing an American flag turned into the skull that is The Punisher symbol. Looks just like it’s supposed to, doesn’t it? The good old red, white, and blue. (I truly do love our actual, non-defaced beautiful American flag.)
Look at the above image. That is not an American flag. In looking at this decal, law and order has never felt so warm and supportive, has it? (“Children, run toward the sinister skull, based on a comic book, for safety!”)
What should I, or my children, do about the fact that they are being terrorized? Run for office? We live in the most gerrymandered state in the country and “adults” in government are literally threatening to impeach a newly-elected state supreme court justice before she has heard a single case.
The adults are not alright. We are broken.
I could go on. I’ll just say that this is not a “doom only” perspective, such as the one recently criticized by Rebecca Solnit in The Guardian (note: Solnit is my favorite contemporary writer; see Hope in the Dark). I consider this a clear-eyed look at American politics and voters in the moment of January 6th, minority rule, hyper-partisanship, white supremacist revival, and a growing desire for autocratic/theocratic rule. Those are all abstract and fancy concepts. Yet, they have real world consequences, such as my children sitting in a gym, right now, their parents far away, waiting for another “all clear” so they can simply go back to school and resume living.
The norm for my children and countless others in America? Active shooter drills and bomb threats, all weaving themselves into the fabric of another normal day. What does tomorrow hold, only halfway through the school week?
And to think, it was just last night, at 7:00 pm, that I watched my elder daughter be inducted into the National Honor Society in a ceremony where a school was allowed to be an actual school.