politics – Lofty Minded in Alaska

Carrying On

When I studied fiction writing, I learned the term simultaneity. It’s a state of existing with more than one thing happening at the same time. Within a scene, a family might be playing a card game, having a difficult conversation, and managing their unruly dogs all at the same time. It’s a state that’s reflective of the real world, as nothing actually occurs in a vacuum, but it takes some skill to write a scene that portrays many things happening at the same time.

I was reminded of the term recently when I was thinking about how weird it is to be going about my normal day-to-day life while our country and its processes are being degraded at such a rapid pace. I check the headlines on my phone while I’m cooking dinner and see that an Iranian woman who’s lived in the United States for decades was targeted and swept away by armed masked men while working in her garden. While Dean and I are planning a small building project to support our small business, the Trump administration is planning to build more prisons to hold more people who are being taken off the streets and away from their families, due process be damned. While I’m at my library job checking out books to kids, education systems at all levels are being targeted, research grants are being pulled, and agencies across the federal government are being purged of professionals and replaced with unqualified Trump loyalists.

I carry on with my normal life the way so many Germans must have carried on with their normal lives as government sanctioned police rounded up people and sent them away to concentration camps, all under terms that were deemed legal. Chances are some of those German citizens were horrified but felt powerless to do anything to stop the machine. But we know now that a lot of them went along with the scheme because they’d been subjected to propaganda that made them fearful of anyone unlike themselves. They’d been programmed to view their Jewish neighbors as monsters and criminals. Purging the country of them, many German citizens agreed, was a way to make their country great.

And yes, I realize that what happened in Germany during Hitler’s reign isn’t happening to the same extent here, but I see signs that are pointing in a direction that’s not so different, and they’re making my inner alarm bells ring at a volume I can’t ignore. For me personally, to stay quiet or to pretend that all is well is not an option. Speaking out is inconvenient. It comes with a risk of alienating people or putting people on the defensive and that is not something I enjoy. But sometimes circumstances require that we move beyond what makes us feel comfortable.

I’m choosing to write this because I don’t have the ability to stop the unbelievable amount of money that the United States Congress just authorized to send to the the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and I don’t have the ability to change Stephen Miller’s heart or Donald Trump’s priorities. I can’t close the doors of the despicable Alligator Alcatraz and I can’t stop the flow of news that somehow makes many of my fellow citizens think that all of this is okay.

What I can do is state for the record that I don’t believe our country is okay. I believe the cruelty being perpetuated by ICE in the name of public safety is unacceptable. I believe the profiteering that our president engages in is unethical. I believe Donald Trump’s love for power exceeds his desire to serve. I believe that for the richest nation in the world to prioritize the financial well being of its wealthiest while undermining the needs of its working class is immoral. I believe that dismantling environmental regulations and disregarding the realities of climate change is harmful to future generations. I believe that blaming all of the troubles of our country on Trans people and immigrants and those who stand up for them is discriminatory and dehumanizing.

I am not naive enough to believe that I can change anyone’s mind, but I know from personal experience that minds and hearts are capable of changing, which is another reason why I am writing here today, to kindly ask those of you who are cheering this administration and its tactics to deeply examine your choice.

If you think that Trump’s tactics are okay, if you think that what ICE is doing and how they’re treating people is in any way making America great, I’d like to encourage you to diversify your news sources. I watched an interview recently in which Adam Kinzinger, former U.S. congressman from Illinois, spoke with Rich Logis, who started an organization called Leaving MAGA. Asked what made him start questioning the MAGA movement and Donald Trump in particular, he answered that his views began to shift when he began to diversify his news sources.

For every news story there are many different angles to consider, and our biases sometimes close us off from hearing a perspective that doesn’t match the story we want to believe. Even more troubling is the fact that certain news organizations are reluctant to report on certain stories. They may not be lying outright but they are not always telling the whole story. I recommend Ground News. They describe themselves as “a platform that makes it easy to compare news sources, read between the lines of media bias and break free from algorithms.” I appreciate the section they call Blindspot, which highlights stories that both left and right leaning media are not reporting on.

This is deeper than news though. It’s about our hearts. It’s about our Faith. It’s about our children and our grandchildren and the people who will be here long after all of us are gone. Do we want this country, the supposed Land of the Free, which already has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, to become even more of a police state? Do we want to continue to ignore the laws of nature in order to bolster the profits of corporations? Do we want to continue to reward a small handful of billionaires with policies that hurt the vast majority of our population? Do we want to ignore the teachings that so many of us grew up with, that instruct us to love one another?

I know there are plenty of Trump voters who don’t call themselves Christian, but most of the Trump voters I know would say that their Christianity is more important than their politics. But Jesus didn’t want people to be treated cruelly. He didn’t want his followers to make other people suffer. He didn’t want to humiliate people or cause harm. He did not scapegoat people who were different from him. Jesus instructed his followers to care for the poor, the sick, the weak, and the children. He did not encourage his followers to rise up politically in order to force his teachings onto anyone.

Jesus was here to bring healing to a broken world and those who feel called to follow his example should want to do the same. But the current administration is implementing policies and engaging in operations that cause human suffering. They even seem to be reveling in it. For as long as this is the case, greatness for the Unites States is an impossibility. All that will come from treating humans with cruelty is long-term resentment, the fomentation of hatred, the stoking of violence, the perpetuation of fear, and generational trauma.

Politics, like war, has a way of narrowing everything down to winning and losing, and for many Trump supporters, the way he’s moved into power since his inauguration feels like retribution for the ways they felt victimized by the last administration. But my hope is that the anger they feel over what they perceived as dangerous from the Biden presidency does not blind them to the dangers that are unfolding right now. If a short-term political battle is won but the ability to discern right from wrong is lost, we’re bound to end up on the wrong side of history.

I don’t want that to happen, so today, before I head out into my garden I’m putting this out into the world. The outcome is beyond my control, but I can rest easier knowing that I’ve done what my heart has compelled me to do.

Carrying On

Naming a road

Bear with me please, because I know I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to steer clear of politics for this blog. But there is a local issue that I feel warrants the breaking of my self-imposed rule. It has to do with a neighborhood squabble over the name of our street.

When we decided to venture out of town and live a more rural lifestyle, we started looking for a house nestled on a few acres. At the time there weren’t many options. We found either a house with no acreage, or acreage with a rustic shack. One day though, we noticed a new ad in the newspaper that sounded appealing. “For sale by owner: Two bedroom house, good view, five acres.” Immediately we made the call.

The man selling the house was about to turn ninety. He wanted to move to Oregon to be closer to his family and in his words, “start a new life.” He was eager to go, and we were eager to buy. The house was less than perfect, although it was sound. And the view, well to say it has a good view is the understatement of the century. The five acres were carved out of the middle of a large homestead, so a lot of wild space surrounded the house. We drove away that day knowing that we had to move fast. We called the seller back that same night, and asked him if we could come take another look. That’s when he said, “I should probably tell you about the neighbors.”

Most people who live in or around Homer, Alaska can claim that they have interesting neighbors, but I’m going to go ahead and make the bold claim that ours may be more interesting than most. An entire book could be written about them, and should be for that matter. Now they are in their mid 80’s, but as a young couple they homesteaded in this area with a baby on the way and a toddler; before there was a road. They are tough. They still haul their drinking water from town, use an outhouse, and keep their home warm with a wood stove.

The old man has quite a reputation. He’s known around town for growing potatoes and toting a gun. We’ve heard stories about him shooting at low-flying airplanes, and real-estate agents. Sharing a driveway with him has been a challenge at times, but overall it’s worked out well. Soon after we moved in I discovered that he and I come from the same town in Colorado, and I credit that little bit of serendipity with making all the difference.

The woman is someone I consider a friend. She works harder than most people I know and still drives into town before church every Saturday morning to play piano for “the seniors” at the long-term care center. She grows, without a doubt, the best strawberries on the Kenai Peninsula. Her stories about homesteading this neighborhood are filled with bears, months of isolation, fires and a whole host of other amazing things.

Just last week I gave her a ride to town when her car was in the shop. I noticed that her breathing was more labored than usual, and she had a hard time getting in and out of the car. “I’ve really gone downhill these past couple of months,” she said after I helped her with her seatbelt. She then proceeded to tell me about how her family moved to a village near Dillingham when she was six years old, and how her father and older brother died in a boating accident during their first year in Alaska. One of the jobs she had to take on in order to help her family survive was feeding the dog team. At first I didn’t think much of that, but then she mentioned that she had to trap animals for them in the winter and harvest and dry fish for them in the summer. No wonder she’s slowing down now, at age 85.

And this brings me back to the name of our road. When we first moved out here the name of our road was Olday Road. The borough felt the need to change it at some point, so they asked for suggestions. Since our neighbors homesteaded the area, someone suggested that the road be named after them. So it became James Road for a few years. Someone was unhappy with that name, perhaps it was someone who had suffered the wrath of the old man when he was feistier than he is now, and they made an issue out of it. I wasn’t a part of the discussion, but had I been asked I would have said, “Absolutely. The Jameses deserve to have the road named after them.” But sadly, the sign at the top of the street now says Maria Road.

I have plenty of stories I could tell about living next to the old homesteaders. A few of them are bad, like the time our dogs got caught in the traps the old guy set to keep the coyotes out of his pile of moose hide. Some of them are funny, like the time they added an entire trailer’s worth of old household items we were getting rid of to their already huge collection of stuff. But most of the stories just have to do with being neighborly; sharing gardening experience, giving rides to town, figuring out where to park our cars when there is too much snow.

I don’t know who Maria is, or was, and maybe her story warrants the naming of a road after her. But this one should be named after the James. They deserve a tribute to their lives as Alaskan homesteaders. It wouldn’t be much but I think it would mean something to them, to see their name on the street sign each time they drive past.