Edited BY
G P Kennedy
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Graeme - D-FW, Texas |
August 2021…it seems an impossibly long way off. As the country with the worst record for dealing with Coronavirus the United States seems to be atypically supplicant before the challenge of beating this thing.
We also have the small matter of a Presidential election happening on November 3, 2020. This election will be hugely consequential in myriad ways and for countless reasons.
On the Coronavirus front it will likely decide whether we, as a nation, simply sit down, deny, and hope/wait for a vaccine that may or may not be coming in 2021. Indeed, from my wide reading on the issue it’s not even a lock that a vaccine will be found to be effective for enough people nor for long enough to justify going into production.
In terms of the bigger picture the coming presidential election is hugely important. I could bang on about polls, demographic trends, gerrymandering, the Supreme Court and a bunch of other Poli-Sci geek topics but this is not the forum for those conversations. Instead, let us focus on a very human, person-to-person ways in which the November vote matters.
This time next year I would like the United States of America to be a kinder, friendlier place to live in and to visit – for everyone. I would like for us as a nation to have restarted talking to our friends and no longer be writing and receiving ‘love letters’ from genocidal dictators; I would like for us to have released the kids kept in cages and have them reunited with family members; I would like facts, research and knowledge to be celebrated rather than distrusted and mocked; I would like there to be a president of the United States who, while everybody might not support, can be looked upon as a decent person out to make all our lives better rather than their own and those of the people that most closely kiss ass.
The America I moved to in the summer of 2014 was the place of Obama and his ‘Hope and Change’. It was a country that said, “Yes we can.” Within three years much of the trans-generational work of equality for all the people of America was being torn up. Gone was the aspiration, replaced by subjugation. Hope had been replaced by the stoked distrust of otherness. Caravans were talked about but they were of fear not love.
Cher taught us that we have no mastery over time so I understand that we cannot turn it back. That said, I would like us to return to a place where common decency is not mocked as ‘sad’ nor does it make people ‘losers’.
On a personal level I would like to be taking my newly printed terminal degree certificate and applying it, and the 25 years of international work experience I have grafted for, to a full time professor job wherein I can teach students face-to-face, in person. ‘Cos let’s be honest the novelty and the shine have worn off Zoom.
Technology is a ceaselessly incredible place but sometimes you cannot beat standing next to someone and engaging with them in an intense, unscripted conversation, eye to eye. To this end, I would like for us to be COVID-free this time next year. That way I can get back to doing what I do best - that which I am genetically predisposed to do. This time next year I want to have a proper conversation with you.
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