TomFlannery.com

Bars are opening this weekend. Sort of. I think.

Outside only……seating only. No sitting or even standing at the bar. First come first serve. Masks required. We live in strange times. This terrible virus has been knocked off the front pages, but that doesn’t mean it just shrugged and went away. I think a certain resignation has crept in, for better or worse. Murder hornets and hurling asteroids and knees to the back of the neck. We want to protect ourselves, but we’re like exhausted boxers unable to keep our hands up to ward off the blows. I’m terrified of a second wave. I know my history. But I’m up against a tidal wave of angst and there ain’t no fighting it. So here we go.

May we all be granted immunity as this summer progresses. I’d like to bro-hug all my boys again. Soon.

Chaos all around……fury and violence and all sorts of racism. From the brutally straightforward kind, to the almost worse casual type exhibited by a heartrendingly large number of us. Unable to step out of our own gaze and see through the eyes of others. Nerves are raw. Everybody is eyeballing everybody else. “What side are they on?”

Folks are walking around like coiled springs. It won’t take much to kick things off. A misplaced word or tweet. A random knucklehead with a rock. More brazen propaganda highlighted on our Facebook feeds. Or just a string of hot, humid summer nights. Seemingly everything is broken right now. A lot of us are feeling like there are things we should be doing, but aren’t quite clear on the details. So we just kinda slump when the suns starts going down, and stare wordlessly at the TV. Feeling more and more disengaged. The cities are indistinguishable for each other. And with so many masks, so are the faces. It’s happening everywhere. And nowhere. It’s an endless loop, both thrilling and terrifying at the same time. We’re better than this, and in some ways we’ve never been better. This is what’s supposed to happen when people have had enough. This is how change is forced. But hearts break when the cost is this high. When the physical damage is fixed, the kind you can’t see needs to be cleaned up as well. If it isn’t, we’re witnessing two tragedies.

But you cannot deny that things are moving. More charges filed. More lights shining on things that used to rely on a cover of darkness. Statues that rub salt in wounds are starting to come down. Racists are still shrieking and squealing, but the pitch is tinnier now. They are bunkering themselves and propping each other up with social media and bizarre photo ops, but they’re having to circle their own wagons now. Disgust is more palpable. Their revolution ain’t coming, and it’s looking increasingly like they’re gonna need a plan B come November. You can’t run a nation via Twitter. It takes some hand to hand at times, some walks around the neighborhood. And our current President seems too cowardly to engage anybody who refuses to genuflect first.

Everybody just seems tired. Protesters. Police. Tired. That we have to do this. Over and over again. From time immemorial. That people still have to die over the pigmentation of their skin. That a few can do this to so many. That generation after generation we’re taught to apply the same stain. Cool heads are there……if you have the time to find them. Until they are the ones with their heads above the parapet, they won’t prevail. They won’t be allowed to.

I’ve always thought that we’re born good and taught to be bad. Sometimes inadvertently. Religion divides as much as it embraces. We believe in the same god our parents believe in. We hate who they hate. The indoctrination starts before we’re fed our first meal. The purity doesn’t last long. Only the strongest of us can resist the gravitational pull of our own upbringings. But I’m seeing it more and more. Young people seeing past their Daddy’s Fox News fixation……or recoiling at the casual bigotry on display at the dinner table. And once that cycle is broken…..the purity returns. It’s as hard for hate to invade an inclusive house as it is for acceptance to find a way into a bigoted one.

That’s my story anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

In a bit..

–tf