We'll keep the light on for you.
"I'm Tom Bodett for Motel 6, and we'll leave the light on for you." That familiar tagline from the ads for an American motel chain has been on my mind a lot recently. If you've never heard one of those ads, Tom Bodett has one of those voices that is instantly calming. Slow and sonorous, it's about as regular folks as you can get. I've been slow to process the reelection of Trump. A lot of people are going to suffer as a result of his return. My own personal safety probably will not be much affected. I am fortunate in that. But I will feel scared, I will feel angry and sick. I will not know what to do, I will not know how to be. I like to imagine myself being brave and standing firm against the coming rush of awfulness, but what does that really mean?
A lot of people have ideas about what that means, and post them regularly on their social media platform of choice. A lot of those ideas sound just like the ones that made the rounds last time. Fuck Trump, punch a Nazi in the face. This kind of thing. Much as I share the emotion behind them, they fill me with despair. Is that the best we can do? Also, what do they really accomplish? The fact that Trump won the popular vote, the fact that so many of the very same people that Trump hates so much voted for him pretty much invalidates those sentiments as an effective means of "resistance".
The thing I want to do most for however long this authoritarian pandemic lasts is to read. To simply withdraw into the world of books for the duration. Certainly, this will be soothing for me, but I've had some doubt about the moral value of this approach. It doesn't do much for others. Or does it?
Consider this: generation upon generation of our forbearers have lived and learned, and have left us testimony. This is how progress happens. Change is inevitable, and I, you, we can't do anything to guarantee that change will be only for the better. What we can do is maintain that collective record of human experience, and add to it if we are able. We can keep the light on for those who come after us.
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What it is.