Living in Coronavirusworld 210: Alternative realities

11/18

pop up Frosty

Go Yale...

I’m wearing a 1940’s era Yale hat and a Yale t-shirt because this s the time of year for the Yale-Harvard football game. During our years in Pittsburgh, I’d take my first son to  the Harvard-Yale-Princeton club for the luncheon buffet and game. Though I’ve regularly seen Yale play Columbia and a few times Pennsylvania since coming to New York City, I hadn’t seen THE GAME for 23 years until two year ago when I saw Yale-Harvard at Fenway Park, the iconic cathedral of the Red Sox in Boston. Steve P recalls the year 1968 when Harvard came back from 22-0 down to tie Yale in the final  seconds and  the headlines read Harvard beats  Yale 29-29. Well and also because last night I met my youngest sons new girlfriend who went to Yale Med School.

I open the Underground by talking about having watched 20 minutes of Tucker Carlson on Fox. He spoke of the “facts” of election fraud. Of dead people voting. With specific examples. By name. And more. At the end, I realized that if I lived in that world, I would feel exactly as I do now. That our democracy was in peril. That the other side had  no scruples and must be stopped at all costs. And that terrorist organizations were a real threat. I had the scary thought that the two halves of our country live in alternative realities. Like a Philip Dick novel like Man In the High Castle where two alternative worlds  live side by side. We have parallel narratives. Liars, cheats and scoundrels who subvert democracy in each story. Our Proud Boys and Qanons are their Black Lives Matter and antifa. Only unlike then Dick novel, there are no portals to connect our two worlds. And I have no idea what to do about that.

 

Steve P says it’s the question of epistemology….how we know what we know. Impirical reasoning  vs. theological reasoning.  And completely different understandings of Isaiah 45:6:  that people may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is none besides me; I am the LORD, and there is no other.  We are in a state of, as Joel calls it, cold civil war. And while we would normally believe in the power of listening to one another, it's  not even clear that it’s possible. 

It’s problematic for me because my experience in Central America in the 80’s taught me that more than one thing can be true at the same time. But we are in a place here where some realities can’t be true at the same time. My friend Steve sees it in terms of maturity:  mature people who take the whole into consideration and don’t see the world revolving around themselves as opposed to the immature who are the center of their own world. 

The use of propaganda is criticized while I remember Christians from Latin American Base Communities telling us that we need better propaganda. Sometimes it's just getting a way to telling your story. 

Is it possible to visit others in their reality without insisting that they  join us in ours?

We do know that we are called to realize that we really are now. That our God is the god of I am. It is existential.  And that those who strive to love are not a tribe but family. And that we are called to a practice of restorative justice for right being.  

he won't concede

Look, these are hard days.  The president refuses to concede. Trying to work every legal angle possible. Manipulate every loophole to subvert the outcome, pushing Republican state officials to refuse to certify results. In Michigan, for example, they sought to disenfranchise the city of Detroit. State lawmakers being invited to the White House and asked to appoint electors who will reject their states’ votes and vote for Trump. We have to pray the center will hold.

in the subway

how'd he get here?

I spend an hour with Rachel, who is dying. And I wonder how many more will die because we have no policy and public health has become politicized to the degree of chaos.  

pop up parade

It’s gotten very cold. I go out to walk and instead wind up in the neighborhood pub instead. Because of covid, our annual events welcoming the holiday season have been cancelled. So I’m happy when a pop up parade comes down Fredrick Douglass as night falls with bands and floats and Frosty the Snowman. We will get by.  We will survive.