Dearest Rachel –
Despite the relative tranquility of our own personal lives, we were born into a world of utter chaos. The year of my birth was a particular annus horribilis; I can – and often do – imply the date by connecting it to the assassination of Martin Luther King (I have an alibi, though), and as you well know, he wasn’t the only leader (or, if you prefer, would-be leader) to suffer that fate that year, as it happened again to ‘another’ Kennedy later that year. Additionally, my folks have told me about watching things unfold down in the city still later that year during the party convention going on barely fifteen miles (as the crow flies) from their home at the time, and wondering fearfully if it would make its way to us at some point (which is kind of why I wanted to check it out when it returned here, although it turned out to be nothing like that legendary madness).
It’s not as if this was confined to the States, either; among what I assume to be many others (after all, there was a war going on in Vietnam at the time, for starters), there were similar riots going on in places like Indonesia. I still recall the Oscar-winning movie that came out about those days, entitled “The Year of Living Dangerously,” which sums things up perfectly. It was, and continues to be a time of living dangerously all around the world; maybe not everywhere all at once, but in enough places that the idea of “peace on earth,” if meant to be applied to the whole earth, is and always will be little more than an idea only.
To be sure, what’s happening on the other side of the world escapes our notice, much like I suspect that anything going on down here commands your attention these days. Even as I’m writing you about this, I realize how little impact this is going to make on you; at this point, it probably looks like just another summer in America – or more specifically (at least for now), another summer in Southern California. Be it Watts, Rodney King, George Floyd or apparently the arrests of some illegal immigrants, it’s as if one part or another of the country loses its mind (assuming it had one to begin with) when summer rolls around… and summer hasn’t even technically started yet.
Again, it’s not happening here in the leafy suburbs of Chicago – at the moment, it’s halfway across the country, and not even in the midst of our city, thankfully – but as the land warms up, it seems like a certain madness takes over on a regular basis, and it’s only a matter of time before it catches on here.
Thus far this time around, the one saving grace has been that I haven’t heard anything about injuries, let alone fatalities. Most of the cars being torched – apart from the police vehicles – have been autonomous taxis (which is a new wrinkle to these affairs since you were here to watch these things on the news), which are driverless; there’s no one to yank out prior to inflicting havoc and destruction on them. Moreover, since they’re electric, they burn more spectacularly (and are next to impossible to put out), so you get a real scene out of the moment. Then again, who’s to say someone isn’t going to get hurt or killed as this progresses and escalates?
Moreover, it absolutely escapes me as to what’s being accomplished by all this. Did the George Floyd riots bring him back from the dead? I mean, I guess they got the cop convicted (because if the jury didn’t do so, there would absolutely have been so much more riots), but was justice served, if the mob was essentially judge, jury and executioner in all but name? Or is that the whole point, to let the mob rule? As far as I can tell, this time around, this seems to have sparked in opposition to law enforcement doing its job of arresting and deporting individuals who have committed crimes on top of being in the country illegally (I may be wrong, but that’s what it looks like). For my part, if I was in a place I wasn’t supposed to be, I’d be trying to keep my head down, and not draw attention to myself. And if I was where I was allowed to be, I wouldn’t be all that keen on those that weren’t; I sure wouldn’t risk arrest by protesting for their sake. So I can’t figure out who these people are, and why they’re doing this. It just seems insane to me.
Maybe this is what grips people now and again, though; the need to yell and break stuff for a cause, no matter how stupid or inane. In generations past, we had wars; people could get this murderous rage out of their system in an organized (sort of) fashion. If you supported the right cause it could even be considered noble (especially in victory, as it’s the winners that get to write the history books, as they say). This has none of that promise of glory, no idea of what might entail victory, at least as far as I can tell. I don’t get it. On top of this, once everything is broken or burned, and assuming the rioters escape arrest, they get to go home and live in the ruins of their own mess. For the life of me, I don’t get why someone would foul their own nest like this.
Maybe this is being sensationalized; after all, the old motto of journalism is that “if it bleeds, it leads.” Maybe this is an isolated bit of madness that won’t catch on elsewhere. I certainly hope so. If it doesn’t strike home, I don’t have to understand the mentality of these folks who are turning some other city into a war zone. But I’ve got no guarantee of that, and it worries me.
In which case, I’d like to ask you to keep an eye on all of us here, honey, and wish us luck; it looks like we’re all going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 