Your Check's in the Mail

About those government relief checks that will soon, I've read, be winging our way ...

I've already seen some harsh memes on Facebook, ones that say (not exact words), something like this:

Dear Never-Trumpers, I assume you'll not be cashing the check that is coming your way.

Others could reply, of course:

Dear Trumpers: I assume you'll not be cashing the check that is coming your way--government handout, you know? Bad thing.

I guess all of this means that even in our current hours of darkness, we're going to try to score political points against one another.

Why?

I pretty much avoid political posts on Facebook--and here--for reasons that I've written about before:

• It does no good. No meme ever changed anyone's mind. Those who agree with it will Like and Share. Those who don't will ignore--or Unfriend. Or block. Or scroll faster. Or whatever.
• The vast majority of my Facebook friends are former students--and they lie all over the political map--reside on both ends of the Left-Right continuum. And I've realized that I don't have to agree with them; I just have so many fond memories of (most of) them--in class, onstage, elsewhere--that I just can't dismiss them. Erase them.
• I've unfriended only one person during my eight years or so on FB--and it had nothing to do with politics. It was a personal issue that went back decades, and I just decided I didn't want to deal with it. So ... now ... every day I see on FB any number of posts that I enthusiastically agree or disagree with. I don't respond to them--even if they refer to me. As I said, it's pointless. Okay, I will sometimes Like something political--but I never dive into the ensuing stream, a stream that often begins coolly enough--but can end up a flaming river that consumes all.

In these viral times, especially, I'm thinking we need to draw together more closely, not look for reasons to shove one another away, to assign one another categories (and thus ease the dismissal of those in the "wrong" category)--social distancing, yes, but only in a physical sense.

It's a sad reality that there are those who have always profited--politically, financially, whatever--from dividing us. Us-vs.-Them kind of stuff. This human trait is an ancient, prehistoric one, and it might have once had some kind of tribal survival benefit. But in our day? It's horribly destructive.

And if we don't rein it in, we will be witnesses to the implosion of a very remarkable way of life that my father was fighting in Europe to protect about the time I was born. 1944.

So my hope is this--that we will realize as these days and weeks of virtual (or actual) isolation go on--as we realize that we are all vulnerable, all suffering (some far more than others)--as we come to understand the fragility of life, of our way of life--that we will close our ears to the divisive demagogues and open them to the healers, the unifiers, the most wholly human among us.