I have not been able to get this photograph of Russian Orthodox priests standing between pro-democracy protesters and police in Kiev out of my mind for several days now. First of all, as a longtime photographer I know that it has “award winner” written all over it, a great example of a single image speaking volumes.
Secondly, the image is a timely reminder, coming as it did on the eve of a State of the Union Speech in which the president all but conceded he would have to go it alone if things were to get better, that my fellow Americans have never seemed to be more self absorbed. This is to say blithely uncaring about how people in the Ukraine and elsewhere continue to struggle in the second decade of the new millennium to attain liberties — let alone having the sustenance to stay alive — that most of us take for granted.
This post started out to be a musing about why some people — and most Republicans, to be sure — remain unalterably opposed to raising the minimum wage, which would stimulate the economy from the bottom up (as opposed to the GOP myth of “trickle down” economics), to providing access to reasonably-priced health care, as well as denying women and people of certain sexual preferences basic rights.
What’s the point?
Why can’t we live in a society imagined by the dear departed Pete Seeger in this marvelous observation about the power of music:
I’ve often thought, standing onstage with 1,000 people in front of me, that somebody over on my right had a great-great grandfather who was trying to kill the great-great grandfather of somebody off to my left. And here we are all singing together. And wouldn’t it surprise all those great-grandfathers if they could see their great-grandchildren singing together? They’d probably say, “Why did we fight so hard?” Good question!
We all go to different churches or no churches, we have different favorite foods, different ways of making love, different ways of doing all sorts of things, but there we’re all singing together. Gives you hope.
I myself am feeling kind of hopeless about big-picture stuff. How did we get to this parlous state of affairs? Why do we seem to be stuck in such a deep societal rut? And what, if anything, can we do to get out of that rut and begin to come together?
Those are my thoughts. Yours please.