Repugnant campaign, ballot-box shock our last wake-up calls

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What does one make for dinner on the last night of the world? On the day we hand over our futures to the unknown? What book shall we read? What bedtime story will comfort our children to sleep? One where the good guys win? One where they never had to fight in the first place?

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Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/11/2024 (327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What does one make for dinner on the last night of the world? On the day we hand over our futures to the unknown? What book shall we read? What bedtime story will comfort our children to sleep? One where the good guys win? One where they never had to fight in the first place?

In the shadow of grief, it’s impossible to see the road ahead. The world we knew is gone. The future, never guaranteed anyway, has been completely erased, replaced only by swirling, stinging sands of uncertainty. With eyes pressed tightly closed, we grasp for something to hold onto, something tangible and familiar.

On the cusp of a second Donald Trump presidency in the U.S., the grief is hitting hard. It’s difficult to believe democracy didn’t die on Tuesday night. It’s difficult to believe this won’t produce more bloodshed, more hate.

Former President Donald Trump waves as he walks with Melania Trump on election night at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Evan Vucci / The Associated Press)

Former President Donald Trump waves as he walks with Melania Trump on election night at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Evan Vucci / The Associated Press)

Like many of us, I feel a bit foolish for thinking cooler heads would prevail, that humanity’s lust for power could never out-muscle our capacity for love. That we would heed the warning signs and enduring grief of our ancestors.

But it seems again the bully is winning and the secret to success is knocking others down. All the narratives we comfort ourselves with now seem like empty attempts to mollify our fears. Our knowledge of what was at stake, and what has been lost, is now in stark focus.

The first time around, we could believe this man didn’t truly intend to carry out everything he said. The preposterous promises strayed too far outside our expectations, and there were too many safeguards in place for any threat to our way of life to seem real.

And yet immediately upon taking office in 2017, Trump swiftly limited the Affordable Care Act, curtailed environmental protections and banned travellers from Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S.

We quickly learned, as have generations across time and our tiny planet, that our future is more fragile than we may believe.

And now, on the eve of Remembrance Day, this mother of three sons can feel a vein of ice forming inside me. What room in our hearts can contain the fear of war? From which devastating and untouched crevice of my soul comes that muffled scream of my grandmothers that begins the realization nothing will ever be the same?

I’m trying, and failing, to convince myself I’m being dramatic.

Again and again, we fail to realize we are all connected, and that this grief is so universal it ought to unite us against it ever happening again. But our veterans from the last major threat to democracy are dwindling, and so too, it seems, is our collective memory of the dangers of totalitarianism.

The statues and monuments to our sacrifices at war are relics from our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives, meant to remind us of the terrible cost of allowing tyranny to prevail. Eyes of bronze have looked into eyes of grief, attempting to, but never replacing the visage of their loved one.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / FREE PRESS FILES
                                The statue in front of Portage and Main’s Bank of Montreal building commemorates the 231 bank employees who died in the First World War

KEN GIGLIOTTI / FREE PRESS FILES

The statue in front of Portage and Main’s Bank of Montreal building commemorates the 231 bank employees who died in the First World War

In front of the historic Bank of Montreal building at Portage and Main stands a soldier like a sentinel over our city’s busiest intersection. Beside the endless roll of traffic, changing through decades from the Model T to Teslas, this statue stood in place of a lost son, and witnessed countless families subsumed by the sandstorm of grief.

I do not want to see the face of my son in bronze. I do not concede that democracy is dead. Instead, I must heed the warnings of a generation fast disappearing with their lived experiences of a time increasingly similar to ours.

Each Nov. 11, we wear a poppy, we lay a wreath at many of our overwhelming number of war memorials. We remind ourselves, lest we forget.

And for now, we are paused in a place of grief, uncertainty and contemplation. A place where the promise of the future feels like a threat, and a place where experience has taught us anything can happen.

It seems unavoidable that we will now be called upon to redouble our expectations of democracy. We will need to expose and shore up the places where our systems are weaker than we think.

We will need to recognize the profound divinity of human experience by placing love and empathy at the forefront of our complex landscape, and recognize that good guys come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, languages and religions.

We need to pledge anew to make good on the promise. Never again.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca Chambers

Rebecca explores what it means to be a Winnipegger by layering experiences and reactions to current events upon our unique and sometimes contentious history and culture. Her column appears alternating Saturdays.

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