I feel sad, a deep down sadness. My good friend says there is a lot of that going around. My friend blames it on the current political situation. I tend to agree, but I’m not sure.
As a brown-skinned person I have always felt a little sadness in this country, a country built on immigration, but with each new set of immigrants came discrimination and hatred until those immigrants became assimilated. Then they would hate the next group of arrivals. It is our American history, and that makes me sad.
I could never understand the short term memory loss of those recent arrivals. I can only attribute it to human nature. No one wants to be on the bottom. We feel better when we can point to others beneath us. It saddens me that I even think that way.
There is so much about humans that makes me wonder. Being a student of history, I see the same horrific crimes being repeated throughout time. I see the same young faces going off to wars that they did not start, do not seem to understand and yet go willing “For God and Country.”
But the God I know is against war and hatred and killing of others. And the country I believe in stands for “liberty and justice for all.” I often think I must not really know God, and the country I believe in does not exist.
I get conflicted when I read of a group of soccer boys trapped in a cave and the whole world wants to help them. Rich and famous people even send submarines to the rescue. Yet, children torn away from their parents and kept in cages on the U.S. southern border seems to only interest those labeled as “libtards.”
When I mentioned this thought among a small group, one man spat back, “Well those Thai boys are innocents.” I just walked away.
My sadness is not simply centered on the atrocities perpetrated by this country; unfortunately this is a global problem. Daily I read about refugees dying at sea or being pushed into the African desert to die. People want to stop refugee’s arrivals, but few ask how we stop creating refugees.
I feel sad when I notice that all the hard fought work to help develop civil rights for the underserved is being dissolved. I feel sad when I realize that former safeguards against oppression, like Congress or the Supreme Court, are no longer viable safeguards.
There are lots of really great people doing really great things. We see protests everywhere to the inhuman acts currently being perpetrated; yet, it’s hard to shake the sadness.
I try to count my blessings: my great family and friends, the wonderful county in which we live, I have decent health, have lived a full life, the list can go on and on; yet, still the sadness is there.
My friends involved with politics tell me to wait until November when the Democrats retake Congress. I smile. I remember when the Democrats had the Presidency and both houses of Congress and accomplished very little.
I exercise and eat well, I meditate and sometimes self-medicate, all in an effort to submerge the sadness — and it works for awhile.
I hear people say the current administration has changed America. I don’t think America has changed. I think the racists and bigots and idiots have always had hatred. It is just that now it seems okay to spew it publicly.
I feel sad. I would like to feel less sad. I bet you would too.
Gabriel A. Fraire has been a writer more than 45 years. He is the former editor of the Windsor Times. He can be reached at www.gabrielfraire.com.
