Healing the Societal Rift

The jujus on the mantel in my room are called to the task.

Watching the rift in American society widen in the Trump years has been a miserable affair. As so many have pointed out, his playbook repeats, with horrifying similarity, the actions of the world’s most detested villain, Adolph Hitler. He’s revived the fascist mentality using the same tactics, repeating the same lies until credulous people believe they’re true. And those lies make people very, very mad, but at the wrong people. Instead of directing justifiable anger at the entities destroying the environment and putting all the money in the hands of the corporate psychopaths who are killing us, his actions deflect the anger at those who hardly deserve it.

The assassination of the United Healthcare CEO inserted a wrinkle in DT’s plans. For once, both sides agree that this dead person did so much harm that it’s very, very hard to feel sorry about it. MAGA and the rest of us can all agree that insurance companies have invited universal loathing, because they have equally pissed off customers on both sides of the aisle, driving so many people to financial ruin, while their executives make millions. Corporate executives are going into hiding and hiring security to protect them from the people they’ve been screwing for years, concerned that they’re next. Perhaps this was the turning point, when MAGA begins to see who the monsters really are. And soon they’ll have to understand that their candidate sides with the monsters, not them. Then the healing can begin.

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An online pundit made a comment after Thanksgiving about holiday celebrations in the homes of MAGA people. Somehow this commentator had witnessed some of these events and noted that not one of the houses they saw had any art on the walls. Over the last few years, academic researchers have shown repeatedly that exposure to art heals, but the presence of what inspires imagination, a sense of peace, or other healing avenues is missing from where these people live. Maybe the first step in healing the rift is bringing art to the people who could really use it. It can’t be fun to be that mad all the time.

I’m imagining what can be done. A caravan of art cars from Burning Man, perhaps, touring the red states, bringing gifts of art, music, and poetry to the people. A rising up of artists to make the world a more beautiful and loving place might not change the MAGA hardliners much, but it can affect the young, whose brains haven’t calcified. Giving them a wonderful to experience mesmerizes and wins people over far more effectively than argument. Proust, of course, explained why this is a good idea:

“Through art alone are we able to emerge from ourselves,

to know what another person sees of a universe

which is not the same as our own.”

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