The world is too much with us

June 9, 2018

“The world is too much with us, late and soon

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!”

After the week we have endured, Wordsworth’s lines are hauntingly resonant. Our world seems to be devolving at warp speed, our own country trapped in a real life version of Le Grand Guignol, an amoral horror show where children are tortured and decades long alliances are shredded.

Trump’s conduct this week towards our allies is beyond shocking. Between his ahistorical insult of Canada as justification for his punishingly high tariffs, to his exhortation that Russia be re-admitted to the G-7 (née G-8) despite not retreating from its annexation of Crimea (the reason for its expulsion in the first place), Trump leaves no doubt that he is, as they say on the street, Putin’s b__ch.” Mueller’s superseding indictment of Paul Manafort and his confederate, Konstantin Kilimnik, on charges of witness tampering, is a fitting coda (Source: “Mueller Adds Obstruction Charge on Manafort and Indicts His Right-Hand Man,” by Kenneth P. Vogel, The New York Times, 6/8/18). The fact that Republicans sit on their hands as a corrupt, malevolent sadist wrecks our standing in the world and jeopardizes our national security tells us everything we need to know about where their allegiances lie.

The latest sign that our federal government is no better than a feral pack of wild pigs determined to weaken the populace, so that we are easier prey, is the Justice Department’s decision not to defend the Affordable Care Act in a Texas federal court challenge. Instead, the DOJ is taking the position that the provision mandating coverage of pre-existing conditions is unconstitutional (Source: “The Federal Government Abandons the Most Popular Part of the ACA,” by Vann Newkirk, The Atlantic, 6/8/18). We are simultaneously stunned, frightened and enraged by the unrelenting effort of a cabal of truly evil people to plunge our world into chaos and darkness.

Against this backdrop, the deaths this past week of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain hit us particularly hard. We struggle to make sense of it.. Particularly in the case of Anthony Bourdain, we wonder how we will fill the void left in our culture. His death has unleashed a torrent of deserved tributes, with people marveling at Bourdain’s role as an intrepid iconoclast who revelled in the joy of discovering other cultures through through their food, vociferously championed the marginalized, whether they were Latinx immigrant restaurant workers or Palestinian children, and of late had become an unflinching champion of women in the #MeToo movement.

We feel bereft and adrift, wondering whether our country is destined to be inherited by feral beasts, as we watch decent people perish. The answer, of course, is not to wallow in despair but to strive to exemplify those qualities we most admired in people like Anthony Bourdain – Curiosity, Empathy and Advocacy. Each one of us has the capacity to approach the world with a sense of wonder— to go places that we have never been and meet people we would not normally encounter. Every one of us is capable of focusing more on our common humanity than on othering and condemning everyone who differs from us. Each one of us can make the choice to stand up in the face of injustice and advocate for those who have less privilege than we do. In that way we honor the lives of the struggling, brilliant, decent people we have lost. In that lies our best hope of creating the world in which we wish to live.

#RIPAnthonyBourdain