Contra Inanity
We departed Coloma Michigan late Sunday morning. The same lake house has accommodated us for ten years. Grandchildren who were infants on our first visit now approach their teen years. The oldest is now 18 and the youngest is 6.
On Saturday Laura and I, our daughter, her partner, and two of four grand kids visited Silver Beach at St. Joseph’s Michigan. St. Joes is only twenty minutes from where we were staying. Silver Beach has been a draw from the days of our grandparents. It was a recreational area in the 1930s featuring the Shadowland Ballroom that could host over 500 people for evening dances. Also it was a bustling amusement park, featuring a 1910 hand-carved carousel, bumper cars, and a roller coaster.
Now Silver Beach still has the restored 1910 Carousel that everyone delights to ride. Laura and I, as seniors, chose a bench in lieu of an animal. The grand kids picked an animal. Round and round we went to the calliope music. Thus the joy of past generations is replicated in our present, holding to the pole, while the magnificently carved and painted animal flashed past observing adults and children.
Good times though often function as a soporific. Colored lights, vivid colors, constant movement seduce us with the pleasure of 
sensation. Good times divert from unpleasantness, things that we’d rather not remember. One could not help notice the patriotic themed decorations that were all about the Carousel house and Shadowland Ballroom. Yes, all that red, white, and blue bunting. The screaming eagle motif. And then the diorama, symbolizing the history of the continent, since the arrival of Europeans. For a few coins, the train travels around the oval track, past bucolic scenes depicting a peace-able land. Then I noticed the not-so-subtle military theme, the rail cars transporting tanks, missiles, the model warplanes on display in the background.
I felt sad and angry, that America has never been a sweet land of liberty for everyone. If your ancestors were black men and women, they were enslaved, property to work the rice fields, and to pick cotton. The South was not alone in the human trafficking, as Northern Banks fronted the capital for the enterprise. Also, we 
ought never to forget the land was taken by force from native Americans. The trail of tears from the Appalachian Mountains to Oklahoma, the slaughter of unarmed Dakota Sioux at Wounded Knee… If your life is on “the rez”, the talons of the American Eagle still serrate the necks of your people. This too is America.
An ultimate glimpse of darkness lacing the artistry and innocence of the Carousel experience, is the story of Camp East Montana, located at Fort Bliss, Texas. The tent city is purposed to coerce persons indefinitely detained by ICE to sign papers for deportation, — held without medicine, in filth, scarce communication with the outside… This is a death camp, the upshot of the Trump administration policy to deport brown people. At least fifty-two people have died while in custody since the start of the president’s second term, according to the July 20 New Yorker article. A fifth of these have been suicides. Click Here to read the entire article about the ICE detention center, a model for more to come.
Outside of the Carousel building is a splash pad and a expansive lawn. Children run with delight through the programmed spray of water erupting from the huge concrete play area. And you could hardly miss the 250 American flags created by a veterans association on the lawn in celebration of the Semiquincentennial. I imagined pulling every flag from the mount to lay upon the ground to remember the off-handed, extrajudicial killing of Venezuelans, the innocents engulfed in continued bombing of Iran, added to those killed by ICE. 250 would not begin to cover the number.
“God shed his grace on thee” is on it’s face, an absurd prayer. Or just a silly platitude.
5 thoughts on “Contra Inanity”
Powerful and unfortunately true. History continues to repeat itself in one fashion or another. How sad your accurate depictions of so many past events. Our country emerged in another war largely facilitated by our war mongering so called president. More ugly and unnecessary violence for us to live with, to remember forever. Lastly, let’s not forget the unchangeable damage we face with climate change and a so called president that just doesn’t give a shit about our world.
Yes patterns repeat because we hold tenacious to what’s known-familiar. But we are able to collectively learn to be and do better, to risk dialing back our preference for our own race and class. After all it’s only by the wildest of chance that any of us are here at all!
One of your best essays, my friend. There is nothing quite like the juxtaposition of opposites to make a point and this is extremely well stated. The sadness those of us who can see this, feel this, and practically taste the dystopian nightmare we are living through, will certainly find that your words will hit home. Thank you.
I’m not trying to justify or sanctify what’s currently going on. But let’s be honest, man has been killing their fellow man since the first Homo habilis (meaning “handy man”), picked up a rock, club or tree branch and bashed in someone else’s head. Technology has “shrunk” the earth. By that I mean what at different points in time news often took months, weeks, days to reach us. Today if one wants too you can tune into any number of media and see anything in real time as it happens, including the wars taking place. As for the current administration I sincerely believe most people felt that they were voting for the least of two evils. No one foresaw the totalitarianism that we are experiencing today.
Perhaps somewhat off topic.
I grew up loving history because of that fact I have visited sites where men savagely attacked their fellow man. I have had the honor of walking on the battlefields that gave birth to this country at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, Trenton, Saratoga and Yorktown. I have walked on the battlefields where brother fought brother during the civil war. Places like Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chickamauga & Chattanooga, Appomattox and the Appomattox Court House. My visits wouldn’t have been complete unless I visited some of the sites where the indigenous people stood up against oppression. I selected four which were, Big Hole National Battlefield, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek Massacre and the Little Bighorn Battlefield. If you haven’t visited a battlefield I recommend you do. You will walk away with a new perspective of how our country was born.
Chuck it is good to hear from you. Well conceived comments.
My response is only that THIS is our collective opportunity to cease this madness. There is much to our benefit from the differences in our cultures, histories, the cuisine and artistic sensibility, et.. War, or to say it plainly, government sanctioned murder destroys all of that along with the lives that are wasted. A good therapist will tell a client, that he/she must stop a destructive form of behavior. Even if we’ve always murdered and pillaged, it is possible to dedicate the energies of humanity to projects to further define our potential.