It feels like we’re in a nightmare!
Breaking news about gun-related devastation, proliferation of hate crimes, waves of roll backs on previously sanctioned rights, revelations from the January 6 Select Committee hearings, television ads of extreme political candidates, and on and on.
We’re constantly accosted by the sound and fury of idiots. We want the sound and fury to signify nothing, but as we can see from recent Supreme Court opinions and laws being enacted in states, it’s clear that the sound and fury have power.
One way to wake up from this shared nightmare is for everyone to vote for those political candidates who seem to be the most sane from your point of view. This, then is a different kind of power—not the “reckless and abusive” kind wielded by the sound and fury. Instead, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it, “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
Political engagement is necessary to continue progressing toward the realization of our shared national ideals—the dream, as it were.
Gwen Dungy 