by Don Hall

The parable of the blind men and the elephant is one that consistently resonates with me.

The quick hits version is simply this:

Five blind men encounter an elephant. Each touches a part of the animal but, due to the limited exposure to each element, misidentifies what they are interpreting. The guy who touches the ear thinks they have stopped at a palm tree. The guy who grabs the trunk thinks it’s a python. And so on. Until the five confer with one another, they can’t know the bigger picture.

We are blind men and the pandemic is the elephant.

Individually we encounter:

• A massive hit to our preparedness for mass extinction events

Globally, we’re all just flailing around and while COVID-19 is not a plague destined to eradicate 50% of the world’s population, this experience demonstrates that we are wholly incapable of surviving one of those 100,000 year old viruses being unleashed from the melting permafrost.

• Our tribal divisions are increasingly a threat to our survival.

A country so divided by race, gender, religious extremes, and a strident refusal for compromise has created a culture war out of everything we deal with. When the very simple task of social distancing and wearing masks to contain the disease is a political hill to quite literally die upon, we’re in trouble.

• The American version of Capitalism is corrupted so thoroughly by greed and power acquisition, it now exists as an existential risk with reward for so few as to eat itself alive.

Bernie tried to get the message across. Most didn’t listen or care. Instead of addressing the harsh economic disparity of the status quo, collectively we decided to focus on cults of personality and cultural tribalism. With the simple reality of a pandemic shutting down so much of our economic viability so quickly, the cracks of our system are widening.

• As the balance of society is thrown off its axis, the time for revolution seems ripe.

The revolution at play is not about income inequality or the rights of women. It’s not even really about police brutality. On two fronts, the revolutionaries are fighting for equity and supremacy for black Americans and the transgendered. As the economy tanks and the anxiety of finding some sense of normalcy within the pandemic sits at the forefront, the creature that is the status quo is weakened so it seems like time for a killing blow.

Looking at the elephant from all of these angles gives a macro view of possibility. Potential for serious and widespread change.

The question at hand isn’t whether or not change will occur. It is inevitable. There is too much will for substantial changes in our system to be ignored and that will to change is how all true shifts in paradigm come to fruition. The question to be explored is what will that change look like?

Our choices seem to be limited more due to the the diverse nature of our American constituency and size than any ideological desires.

CHOICE #1: FULL ON WHITE SUPREMIST DICTATORSHIP

If improbably Donald Trump and the GOP-run Senate manage to cheat their way into a victory in November (because, at this point, the Trumpster Fire has already been impeached for blackmailing a foreign country to assist in his re-election campaign so assuming he won’t cheat is almost diabolically naive) the table will have been set and we’re all dining on the scraps of white supremist authoritarianism.

The white identity politicking of these old white dudes with intent upon stoking fear of black people, young people, and socialists is so stridently horrifying it is no wonder Americans are at each others’ throats over this current regime. If he wins again and maintains that creature of a Senate, he’s gonna get his Wall, he’s gonna get his deportations, and he’ll likely get his war.

Perhaps I’m less trusting of our institutions than I should be but with the courts packed as they are now with arch-conservative judges, the SCOTUS almost completely conservative, and the very Republican charge to “Save the Economy at the Expense of Old People, Black People, Brown People, and Everyone Else in the Service Industry” I’m not as confident in our chances should these greedy monsters prevail.

We can do so much better than embrace this retrograde America where white men ruled and everyone else was beaten into submission.

CHOICE #2: FULL ON SOCIAL JUSTICE DICTATORSHIP

As the Racial Marxists continue their rampage through our cultural institutions, calling out minor mistakes as firing offenses, the onslaught of censorship of speech and thought, the cult-like insistence that all white people are racist, putting these hucksters and secular religious zealots in charge will be a full on rebuke to all the advances of the Enlightenment as well as any good created via the Liberal Democratic experiment of the United States.

Perhaps that’s a bit extreme but so is a co-founder of #BLM writing the following:

Maybe I’m over-reacting but when diversity training indicates that objectivity, individualism, and intellectualization are markers of white supremacy, I’m thinking we are waltzing into the demise of rational society.

The goal for both the Extreme Right and the Extreme left are almost identical. The power to push their agenda, to punish those who disagree with that agenda, and to fundamentally sabotage the ideals of Liberal Democracy. 

I have to admire the Left, though. The Right went after Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Left decided to go after all white people. At least they think big in their scorched earth strategy.

CHOICE #3: A True Liberal Democracy

The third possibility is to go back, not to the mores of the Constitutional Days of pre-Civil War, but to the ideals written in those documents. Equality (not equity). Checks and Balances that still mean something. Rationality and the goal of the common good rather than the good of the few (the few being defined as the wealthy in the first model and the marginalized in the second).

If one takes a strong look at all the data collected it becomes apparent that the liberal democracy begun 244 years ago has made genuine strides into that utopian ideal. America is a far better place for all people than it was two centuries, one century, fifty years, or even ten years ago. Progress is slow and looking beyond the ear or trunk of the elephant is essential to truly gauge it accurately.

In essence, liberal democracy is working. It may not be working as fast as the current crop of activists would like it to but it is working and can continue to work.

The goals of equality are winning. Yes, we took a backwards turn with Reagan and then Gingrich using their slowly diminishing power to sow the seeds of polarization among the citizens but we can move forward again. The right wing zealots decided to make the culture war between the elite whites and the rural whites. Today the elite whites are waging campaigns to twist themselves into sycophants to the teachings of Derrick Bell, Ibram X. Kendrick, and improbably Robin DiAngelo. The rural whites adhere strictly in reaction to this by cleaving to the fetid breast of Trump.

The rest of us, the vast majority of the country, do not subscribe to either camp but are nonetheless heavily influenced by them via the digital megaphones they wield so well.

From a new online community, Persuasion:

There is much to lament about the changes that have taken place in some of the country's most important institutions over the past years. But there is also much to criticize in what these institutions looked like at their supposed best. Our goal is not to return to a golden age that has, sadly, never existed; it is to build societies that live up to the noble and ambitious values of freedom and justice better than any society of the past.

That’s our job. To build our society to be better.

Better looks like this elephant:

• Accessible and excellent healthcare for all citizens.

• Accessible and excellent education for all citizens.

• Equality under the law with no regard to wealth or race.

• Effective and just reparations for the crimes of the past (specifically addressing the ugly discrimination done against American blacks).

• Due process and accountability for those in authority positions.

• Accessible and excellent financial safety nets for our least able.

• A return to ethics, justice, and grace.

In the competing visions of the future society, the centrists have the best and most noble ideals regarding how we proceed. The elephant of pandemic has given us the possibility.

All we have to do is have the will to resist demagoguery and the false ideas of moral purity and commit to the path set for us when the country was founded.