Day of the Dead, 2019

Last weekend, when we went to see the Dia de Los Muertos altars and display downtown, I really was blown away by their beauty and intricacy and all of the care that had gone into each one, and how the entire display in Grand Park was so dazzling. I spent a long time looking at them, and even though I thought it was beautiful, I felt increasingly sick to my stomach. By the time we were driving home, I really felt sick and like I was not okay. I though it was because I had drinks and dinner very quickly before we saw the play at the Music Center, but I realized that it was the impact of photos of the dead children and families who have died in ICE custody, at the border, or as a result of family separations. And the photos of all of the dead women who have died at the hands of their partners and all of the school children and others who have been gun violence victims. We as a country are never going to have clean hands (we never did, but it is much worse now). We can elect new and better human beings as leaders, we can become a more educated and responsible electorate over time, we can have truth and reconciliation procedures to try to make some amends for what has been done in our name. But there are countless lives that have been lost and ruined, countless families that have been separated and countless children who have been abused at the hands of officials and will never be okay. I felt sick all night. The next day, when I took my sons to see it (bear witness, have their simple impressions, I hoped, about how much the display looked like the movie “Coco”), I was relieved when most of the displays commemorating children and families were gone because the holiday was over. They could enjoy the beautiful colors and flowers and oversized, mythological animals, and that would be enough. And as the last few days have gone by, and I have gotten into little snits online with people I scarcely know or don’t know at all, it is largely about people who tone police their allies or who don’t/can’t/won’t see the forest for the trees. I have, for instance, wanted to yell at people who think of themselves as activists who are wagging their internet fingers at other liberals and saying that we must not hate, it sure sounds like you hate, you have to understand these poor deluded people who voted for Trump and how some of them regret it but we must not judge these folks now or ever, now now now let’s be civil. And it seems like I’ve turned a new corner between how little shit I’m interested in hearing from the civility police, let the above vignette be a sort of explanation.