Chris Jepson: We've so very far to go

As a lifelong student of history I cannot help marveling at how far we’ve come as a species. All of our ancestors, all of us share DNA from the same “original” mother (Mitochondrial Eve). As uncomfortable as that may be for some, it is an incontrovertible fact. Anatomically modern man (estimated today to be 200,000 years) walked out of Africa and populated the world. And, at this actual moment “they” mass in Cleveland to nominate Don-The-Con Trump to be president of the United States.

I’m 67 years old. I vacillate between being extremely disturbed over the direction of America (and the world) and to not so much giving a damn.

It saddens me greatly to read that Australia’s Great Barrier Coral Reef will be dead in my lifetime. I lament the loss of habitat, over our species’ rape of Mother Earth. I cannot grasp a logic that isn’t alarmed over half-a-billion Americans living in the lower 48 states and the implications of such population growth on our “shared” environment. Why need that happen? Why?

I am astounded that a Pakistani man honor-killed his sister (Fauzia Azeem) because she had the temerity to, among other things, post on her Facebook page, “I believe I am a modern-day feminist. I believe in equality.” He killed his sister as a matter of family honor. That is a reflection on all of us as a species. But for the luck of the genetic draw, I could have been “that” man, acculturated to murder my sister because she had the gall to think for herself.

Before our eyes, we witness the gawd-awful goo — the now regular flushing of the toilet from Lake Okeechobee — befouling our South Florida coastline. We know who and what is responsible. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

We walked out of Africa but haven’t put down the cudgel. We mow people down by the dozens in a truck. We gun down dancing gay Latinos by the club-full. We assassinate police officers. We execute children in elementary schools. We fly planes into buildings. We blow-up treasured historical sites because our, the one “true” God condones it. We marginalize those who do not share our beliefs (I am guilty of that). We cowardly don white robes and hoods and/or goose-step to terrorize our fellow citizens. We ignore the suffering of others by offering trite bromides such as “adversity builds character” or “just pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” We put in place “trickle down economics” knowing it’s a sham (see David Stockman).

Does it have to be this way? Historically, more (some) are living better than at any point in history. But it all seems so fragile, our “democratic” way of life. My sense of our times today is partly one of befuddlement. How, with all that confronts us as a nation, are we reduced to the choice of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate? How can it be that so many of my fellow citizens look at the world and feel (rather than think) Trump is a solution for anything? Make America Great Again? What does that even mean?

And I think, why not. If the ’Pubs gut the middle class, spit on the impoverished, vanquish our environment and “neocon” the Middle East, who am I to decry the GOP’s revision of the American Dream. If that be the majority decision.

It is challenging to stay engaged, yet we must.

We’ve come so far and have so very far to go.