Ok, so I am old and sometimes grumpy and can’t keep up with much of electronic technology. But I can be outraged at pornography. Yesterday I had planned to read “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” at noon from the Josephy Center via Zoom. The hacking started just as people were getting on to say hello and Merry Christmas and listen to the story. It was shouts and insults and very explicit video of very young people playing at and having sex.
There was pornography before Covid, and political divisiveness, petty crime and homelessness. But once again Covid seems to have upped antes, broadened divisions, and emboldened those who have no use for civil society and a community of wide but healthy differences. Instead of problem solving we get escalation, even exhilaration—at the expense of civility.
Covid has disrupted education and closed businesses—while making others incredibly rich. It’s confused travel plans, distanced relatives, and escalated differences within families and among nations. And it has engendered fatigue among health care workers and uncertainty and distrust among ordinary citizens.
Meanwhile, weather is ripping the country apart, from California fires to Kentucky tornadoes. Climate change deniers have grown silent, but that is no compensation to the lives lost and torn apart with wind and fire.
So, is zoom bombing—I learned the word for it yesterday—the pranks of bored teenagers? Or is it the calculated magnification of the voices of sick people of all ages who can’t find places in this changing, chaotic world? And if it’s that, what can those of us looking for normalcy and compassion do about it?
It might be another crazy thought from an old and increasingly grumpy guy, but what sprung to mind yesterday, after the shock of it, is that we need nationwide lessons in community and civility, and that doing away with the military draft not only gave us our longest wars, but further divided a fractioning country.
Vietnam ended—in my humble opinion—when the military ran out of poor and brown people and started after the sons of white doctors and lawyers and their PTA and Good Housekeeping moms. I say this because I marched with them, and watched their sons get drafted out of the Peace Corps.
Not everyone has to be a soldier, but every 18 year-old should take a year away from parents’ homes and clean bed pans or build trails in some distant place with others doing the same damned thing. And learn to get along with the others—as soldiers have learned forever that they could.
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