A kick in our complacency

 A Kick in Our Complacency

This morning I was thinking about some of the thoughts Picard delivered on Star Trek:

Picard: "Maybe Q did the right thing for the wrong reason."

Guinan: "How so?"

Picard: "Well... perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency—to prepare us for what lies ahead."— Written by Maurice Hurley

"The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves, and the rest of humanity."— Written by Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore

Perhaps the past two years of overwhelming corruption and cruelty have been what we needed to kick our apathetic asses into gear. In 2020, we were horrified enough to flood the polls for change… but it wasn’t enough to keep the change. The insanity of WWII and seeing what the Nazis did served to drive us toward creating a better civilization, which led to a few decades of progress toward equanimity. But we became lazy. We bought the lie of trickle-down economics and reduced taxes on corporations and the wealthy, leading to hoarding. We bought into a culture celebrating excess, glorifying the “haves” and treating the “have-nots” as if their lack was laziness rather than the actual systemic oppression causing it.

Perhaps seeing our neighbors slammed to the ground and hauled off to filthy detention centers, good people shot to death in the street, and our national parks opened to ravaging by big business—maybe these things were necessary to wake us up from the stupor. Maybe the President of the United States openly saying at a rally in Perry, Georgia: "I can just see the fake headlines: 'President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump.' That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn, I'm going to say it: We're making a freaking fortune."

Are these things enough to shake us from our apathy longer than Tuesday’s election? Are we going to remember the schoolgirls dead in Minab, the federal employees who wrongly lost their jobs, the military leaders with impeccable service stripped of their positions by a Fox News host, the devastating effects of DOGE on USAID and the lives that have been lost, the destruction of our historic White House, the hundreds of millions spent on Kristi Noem to ride her horse and make threats, the lies, the racism, the xenophobia…? Will we regret and try to heal our broken alliances? Are these things enough to cause the faux Christians filled with hatred and Islamophobia to decide to follow the actual teachings of Jesus rather than use Him as a mascot for their self-righteousness and heresy?

If you have not voted early, vote Tuesday. But do not stop there… do not forget that we must build a greater meaning to our existence than the pursuit of personal comfort and wealth. We must unite—strongly and resolutely—to build a better future, a society that seeks the betterment of all of humanity.