The Rowers Keep on Rowing

I’ve long held the belief that everything you need to learn about humanity can be found in the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The basics about human decency, caring for others, self-sacrifice, gluttony, greed, and the dumbing down of humanity are all there neatly wrapped up in 100 minutes of Technicolor.

In 2016, I was flummoxed to find out how incredibly racist and misogynistic the world really was. I mean I knew it existed, but I had no idea how rampant it really was. The privilege of privilege was a good shield, and I kinda miss being that naive. But then people started saying the quiet things outloud. And now we’ve progressed to where they are just shouting in spittle-flecked outbursts everywhere and all the time. And when we complain or push back we are “elite”, “virtue signalling”, “in a moral panic”, “woke”, etc… Are we any better? Probably not. We call them “Nazis”, “racists”, and “fascists”. I think the difference is that we’re asking them to stop pushing hatred and domination down our throats like a ball gag.

I write this in the time after Renee Good’s murder, an event I suspect will make the history books as a key event that changed America forever. She may well be our Archduke Ferdinand. She was all the things the “Right” despises: a woman, queer, and an activist. She was killed for the simple act of trying to watch over her community and observe the actions of ICE. She wasn’t armed. She didn’t use her car as a weapon like James Alex Fields, Jr. in Charlottesville in 2017. A fact that, despite abundant video evidence, we’re being told she did. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”¹

Last night, after attending a community vigil in Good’s memory, where scores of people gathered to pray, sing, and reflect, our town council held a meeting where part of the agenda was to discuss what options our city has to respond to the current crisis. We are an agricultural community, and therefore, we have a substantial Latino community. Many of the speakers before the council were high school students of Latin American heritage. The common refrain of all of them was that they were afraid to go to school. To leave their homes. Not just for themselves, but for their parents and grandparents, whom they fear will be abducted while they are at school. No rhetoric. Actual anxiety-inducing paralyzing fear. Overwhelmingly, the public comment period was filled with people asking the city to do something, anything, to help the community feel safe. Except the one guy, seething with religious righteousness and old white man privilege, who felt we all needed to understand (and I paraphrase) that God ordained Donald Trump and the current administration as our leaders and we’re duty-bound to blindly follow them. He peppered his comment with some biblical verses like Romans 13:1 “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Pretty sure you could call that virtue signaling.

When it came time for the city to discuss some potential actions it could take, it became clear that our city is impotent. All their ideas were performative at best and unrealistic in implementation. Nothing they suggested would do anything to make our citizens feel safer. It would just make them look like they were trying. Declaring a State of Emergency would accomplish nothing. We’re told the local police can do nothing legally to help ensure our safety when men in unmarked cars, toting guns, and wearing masks decide to pull us out of cars and homes. We were told that the cash-strapped city needs federal funding to rebuild our outdated infrastructure, and they can’t get that if they interfere with or complain about ICE. Then we were treated to some patronizing lectures from a couple of the members of the council. We were told that there’s only been like 40 people in our county detained (Only?); and that we’re all just falling prey to fear-mongering created by activist organizations. If you’re an immigrant who hasn’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. Said with all the earnestness White Male Privilege affords. They even went after the local Latino non-profit trying to help care for the community and document ICE activity, like they were the problem. Not the ex-Proud Boys running around waving guns at unarmed citizens. Honestly, I could have been sitting on a wrap-around porch in the South sipping mint juleps, listening to a plantation owner or overseer justify owning slaves and whipping them into submission – that’s the vibe it was giving.

Everything feels futile. Love thy neighbor is just something one mutters in church. Neighbors and “good Christians” see the needy and oppressed as parasites. People online and in government callously talk about the death of Renee Good as if it were justified because she had the audacity to be queer and volunteered to bear witness to government cruelty. The leadership on the Left spend their time constantly asking for money to get re-elected to fight for us, but have yet to show us they have a plan. We have no real leader. We have no General Washington to lead us into battle. We aren’t riding at dawn to save the nation.

While Dahl may not have been a fan of the film adaptation of his book, I most certainly am. And, in these uncertain times, I keep hearing Gene Wilder recite the poem from the boat scene in my head as I scroll through my feed or watch the news.

Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they’re certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing²

Yup. They certainly are not showing any signs that they are slowing.

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1. Orwell, George. 1984. London: Secker & Warburg, 1949
2. Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964.