America is a beautiful thing…
Yesterday I promised I was going home and that I’d leave you alone.
My apologies but before I do, I want to talk about Ursula again. (I wrote about her a few days ago, the post is still up.) A friend messaged me and asked me if I liked her. He shouldn’t have had to ask. That he did is my fault. My bad writing. I wanted readers to like her. I like her very much. More than that, I admire her.
Ursula is not a victim but she is a sympathetic character. Her father abandoned her when she was in high school, married her off when she was sixteen. The first marriage went bad and she kept trying. In her third marriage, she was physically beaten. Using nothing but wits and grit (those quintessential American values we all pride ourselves on), she’s assembled an enviable life, a life of tranquility and peace surrounded by the animals she loves and trusts in a beautiful place. Finally, she’s safe.
She’s a born-again Christian and has those insufferable beliefs. But why wouldn’t she? The Christian right has aggressively courted her. They’ve given her difficult life context, a belief system, they’ve made her important. What have we, the liberal left, done for her? We’ve been failing for decades, abortion is irrelevant to her life and we lost that one anyway. Guns, she’s a woman who lives alone in the country, she has guns. Minimum wage, we haven’t touched that since what, 2007? What good have we done Ursula?
We don’t even talk to her. Remember, we’re democrats, we’re the “professional class” (thank you Bill and Hillary). Too bad there are not enough of us “professionals” to win elections. But no, Ursula is not our type and we’re going to criticize and belittle her until it’s we who are no longer relevant. Because Ursula is much of America today. She’s looking for a belief system because she needs one (we all need one). And because we on the left failed to provide one, she looked elsewhere. And we have the gall to call her a hypocrite for taking a few dollars a month in disability? That’s the least she deserves. After all, it’s we who abandoned her.
In our condescension, we imagine ourselves to be the intellectual elite, the smart people calling the shots and charting direction for the good of the little people. And the little people are sick of it. Because we’re not good at it. We don’t honor them or value them or, as I wrote above, even talk to them. We don’t provide aspiration and vision, we don’t project optimism and hope, we don’t paint a picture of a better tomorrow. And worst of all, we don’t deliver on whatever modest aspirations we do articulate. We’re losers. And nobody wants to be associated with losers, no matter how smart we imagine ourselves to be.
Reconsider your thoughts on Ursula. I’ll try to be a better writer.