[Sunday, 31December:]
I hope everyone, whatever you believe or don’t, is enjoying the season and will thrive in 2024.
This will be a challenging, even frightening, year for our world and nation. I hope each of us can avoid internalizing all the pain and passions generated by events, and see always the individual human(s) right in front of us.
I expect to enjoy 2024. A loving marriage, a fine community, the natural world, writing, playing pickleball and bridge, and swimming, and doing the occasional radio show should help, as will Foxy the dog.
But it’s an ominous moment. Someone should vigorously shake both Hamas and the Israeli Government, box their ears, and enforce a time-out. No one will try. While Palestinians die by the thousands and Jews mourn their dead from October 7, that conflict threatens to widen dangerously. Nor has Putin’s Russia withdrawn from Ukraine.
The early ravages of climate change will strengthen, adding to tension, fear, and conflict. Our government and others, will still be too politically craven to take meaningful steps.
Our democracy and social fabric are under extra stress. Whether you believe that Donald Trump’s narcissistic, amoral, and incompetent narcissism threatens a slide into dictatorship or that the liberal, “woke,” establishment is wrongly persecuting him for voicing anger many others feel, you see real dangers. You feel strongly about that, and others feel opposing views equally strongly. And, yeah, there are more guns and less mental health around.
This won’t be fun.
I feel a strong obligation to do, say, and write what I can about it, although I’m just one superannuated little voice in a small southwestern city.
I do not feel obligated to hate anyone, to demonize anyone. Even Mr. Trump, grew up in a nightmarish family in which his father taught things you wouldn’t teach your kid in a way no kid should be raised.
It’s critical that, while doing what we lawfully can to improve things or avert disasters, we not let that sour us on life. Love our kids, families, and friends – and know that those misguided folks who dislike our views love their kids, families and friends. They are not evil. They do not wish to destroy our nation or city. They just see different dangers, or different routes toward improvement.
It’s more vital than ever to keep talking.
It’s more vital than ever to live the best life you can for you. To recognize that we’re a community, sharing common interests. To do random acts of kindness and exemplify for your kids strength and tolerance. I disagree politically with many fellow pickleball players; but we all want good games, shared laughter and conversation, and more courts. Could we all, even in school board meetings, recall that our opponents are fellow Las Crucens with hopes and fears much like ours? Most of us want the best for our kids (wacky as each other’s ideas may seem). Treating opponents that way will feel better and make your advocacy more effective.
I want a better community. I’ve never understood why disagreeing on content requires reviling another person, or how anyone (progressive or conservative) expects to be heard more clearly by shouting insults. Understanding the folks you’re shouting at can help you focus what you say – and hearing conflicting views [actually listening to conflicting views] can help you sharpen your own vision of the truth. It could also help our world survive.
Happy New Year!
– 30 –
[The above column appeared Sunday, 31 December, in the Las Cruces Sun-News and on the newspaper's website, as well as on KRWG’s website under Local Viewpoints.]
[With the holidays and other matters, I didn’t record radio versions of the columns for two weeks, this one and the previous column (on Christmas movies), but will begin again this next week, starting Monday, 8 January.]
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