The wedding was not an easy one to get to – miles back in the wild woods, along sharp, winding paths made that much less navigable by the rain that had been falling all day. Came at last our first glimpse, through an opening in the trees, of a few scattered cabins and cars parked at the top of a steep, slick, muddy slope.
My intrepid wife was inundated with urgings, encouragement, and advice as she gunned the engine, trying to plough uphill through the rising mud. She might well have made it, first try, but for the handful of people who emerged from one of the already-parked vehicles, made their way into the open space at the exact peak of the slope and … stopped.
They just stood there, gazing calmly on our car as it bore up on them. No effort to dodge out of the way, hasten across the clearing, or even cross their hearts and hope to die. Only blank, staring faces and immobility.
My wife stood on the brake to keep from mowing them into the muck. Our car began rolling backward, the backseat brigade ducking to clear her line of vision to the rutted trail and row of trees behind us as we trundled slowly to the bottom of the hill.
Now, she was faced with climbing the slippery slope again, without benefit of the running momentum that had carried us so near success the first time. (Another car had pulled up behind us and stopped, blocking any effort to back up for the second try.) She gunned the car again; it swerved, tugged, and grappled with the goo. Again, she came within a whisper of the crest …
… only to find those same people still standing there, still watching, still disinclined to move beyond their apparent fascination with my wife’s Herculean efforts.
Another quick stop, another slow acceleration in reverse, more ducking in the back seat. Another jam on the brakes, a few feet in front of the still-not-moving vehicle behind us. Above us, we could see the group on the hill looking down, shaking their heads, and finally moving away.
Too late. My wife’s third effort still couldn’t quite surmount the crest, and once more we slid back – this time, into a tree that left it’s scraping dent along the right rear portion of our car.
Seeing that, the driver behind us finally realized we needed more room to accelerate. He backed up to let us retreat, rev up, and re-charge the hill, this time with success. Well, success and a battered chassis.
They remind me, these frozen onlookers, of so many in our country. How long are we going to gaze, bemused, as our country tries so desperately to surmount what increasingly seems like the greatest dangers of its history? How long are we going to precipitate our decline with this stagnant inability to respond to what is happening?
They come in so many forms and sizes, these immovables. The ones who decline even to watch the news; they find it so tiresome and unsettling. They know enough, they’re sure, to make a decision, when the time comes – if they absolutely have to do so.
They insist on voting based on the tropes and truisms and stereotypes of 40 years ago … on blindly swallowing the brain-washings of an utterly corrupt media … on drawing their confidence from the echoes of others, like themselves, who stubbornly refuse to look seriously at the reality of what’s going on around them.
Oh, how they know what they know: Democrats love poor people and minorities, Republicans are rich fat cats who just want to blow something up, progressives are goofy but conservatives are a bore, Trump’s a jerk, Biden’s a sad case, but then, don’t we all get a little carried away with the patriotic stuff, anyway?
On the other side are the hyper-confidents: the November elections are all sewn up, so let’s blow it off and dance like the economy will bounce back by Christmas. America’s too big to fail and sure, terrible things happen, but God ‘ll course-correct us with a minimum of fuss, one of these days.
And, hey: if He chooses not to, He’s bound to swoop down and take us all to glory before things get too rough. Persecution, happily, only comes for other people, in less fortunate countries.
Even better: things don’t have to change all that much. Righting the ship of state can probably be done with relative ease. There’s no such thing as soul-deep conflicts irreparably splitting this indivisible nation – just a few villains to un-elect, a few crooks to put in jail, and we’ll have this country back to 1961 before you can work up a sweat.
And then there are those of us content to just rail against the news of the day. To roll our eyes at the headlines, “tsk, tsk, tsk” at the soundbites, snarl at the talking head on television. We’ll show ‘em, when it's time to vote again. Because this time, voting’s gonna work out right. Sure, things went a little bonkers last time – when the “good guys,” supposedly, were in charge. But now, the “bad guys” are running the show …
… systematically destroying every institution … working tirelessly to corrupt, confuse, and conscript our children into evil … bending law enforcement into an instrument for punishing all who challenge them … dismembering our Constitution and intimidating our churches into silence …
… so, how can America possibly lose, come election time?
How could things slide downhill to destruction, with so many gazing blandly, blankly, inertly at what’s happening right in front of them? Won’t it be interesting, seeing how things just kind of work themselves out?
Whether we pay attention or not … do anything or not … pray very much, or not.
Our nation is fighting an uphill struggle for its life. "Hope we’re not in the way."
Nah. Just stand there, everybody. It’ll all be over in a minute.
Comments