Just Another Defaced Doll

Why is it that a segment of the population has decided to detest intelligence as suspect? They reject smart solutions to problems—in fact, ANY solutions to many problems such as climate change, pandemics, needy families, or lack of water. They’re anxious to believe the problems are illusions and gather around those who’ll tell them they’re right. Opinion leaders who might be political or social or wealthy or religious draw fat dark lines around their beliefs for them, shutting out dissenting opinions with a slamming door. Suddenly the morass of real life is simple. There are the correct beliefs and everybody else. Easy-peasy. The black-and-white is easy to hold close, because it feels good to be unquestionably right. They use religious words to make hate look acceptable. The doomsayers become merely annoying, whether or not they’re accurate in their predictions. If you don’t listen, you don’t ever know you might have misjudged the situation.

The truth is that life can be scary, because adults of all ages need to navigate through it, making hard decisions, accepting errors as they inevitably appear.

As a young child, my little sister was gifted a Shirley Temple doll, complete with shining ringlets in her hair. My sister cut the curls off. Bald was easier—no maintenance. My parents were aghast to see an expensive gift thus reduced to worthlessness. My sister colored on the doll’s face because she didn’t like her any longer, since she didn’t regrow her hair as expected. The doll was tossed away. The simplest path doesn’t always present the best outcome.

We keep thinking and experimenting because we must.

Americans now live in an unfamiliar environment. Resources we once treasured are tainted or destroyed. We must counteract a dizzying array of toxins we don’t really understand when we try to enjoy a vacation outdoors. Wildfire, floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes seem common. The information we depended on to help us know what do to so we could feel free is subject to censure. Traveling can be trying, first, because air traffic control and airline requirements pose unfamiliar issues. Passenger train travel is cumbersome. The welfare of passengers is not a top priority on the highways, airways, or train tracks. Second, Americans are mocked in many countries as being dupes of an out-of-control government bent on eliminating all signs of compassion from the country. Soldiers who volunteered to defend our country are used to enforce divisions. We ignore a need for wildfire help from Canada that has so often been here to help us. We can claim no automatic respect. Even our discoveries are suspect.

The violence and poverty in our daily life marks us as a third world country, ripe for manipulation. Prices for everyday citizens go up. Taxes for the obscenely wealthy go down. We don’t know exactly who’s in charge, if anyone. Those some label minorities are being surgically removed from sight—including thinking women and immigrants, regardless of how valuable they’ve been to the country. No segment of the population can feel entirely safe on the street or even at home.

Can the destruction of beloved icons of our country destroy who we are? Some hope so. We’ve disgraced ourselves in the past, but we eventually realized where we had gone wrong and clumsily tried to make amends. What began as a contest between two political parties has morphed on a diet of lies into a conflict between values. Spiritual beliefs grow stronger and more prevalent as they’re tested because they’re kind. Humans are designed to work cooperatively. We thrive physically, intellectually and emotionally on love. The Americans who built this democracy as best they could haven’t bowed down yet. We never will.