And we are all melancholic.

Melancholia is the brutal disaffection that characterizes our saturated systems.

Once the hope of balancing good and evil,
true and false,
indeed of confronting some values of the same order,
once the more general hope of a relation of forces
and a stake has vanished.

Everywhere, always,
the system is too strong:
hegemonic.

Against this hegemony of the system,
one can exalt the ruses of desire,
practice revolutionary micrology of the quotidian,
exalt the molecular drift or even defend cooking.
This does not resolve the imperious necessity
of checking the system in broad daylight.
This, only terrorism can do.

….I am a terrorist and a nihilist in theory
as the others are with their weapons.
Theoretical violence, not truth,
is the only resource left to us.

— Excerpt Simulacra and Simulation, On Nihilism, p. 162
by Jean Baudrillard

Yesterday, as is my custom, I traveled a few minutes to Geneva for a change of scene.  A change in scene often helps my comprehension when I endeavor to read philosophy.  I am finishing Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard, written in 1981.  That seems long ago.  I was younger then and Reagan was president.

I read behind the Kane Country courthouse because there is a shaded bench, it is peaceful, quiet.  I sit in proximity to a sculpture of a young female frozen in bodily position and facial expression of delight.  The statue is a symbol of serendipity, commendable, rare, an ideal of childhood.

On the front side of the courthouse, facing Third Street are memorials, statues to the wars that our nation has fought.  There is an imposing sculpture, three figures, one holding the staff of an unfurled company banner, another with a drum, and the third holding what appears to be a Sharpes repeating carbine.  This statue on a raised pedestal is to memorialize all from Kane County who volunteered to serve in the Civil War.  Many names of volunteers are found on the bronze plaques fixed to the base of the pedestal.

My great uncle fought in the Civil War, albeit on the other side.  I have thought a lot about what that conflict means to our society currently.  I do not think of the Civil War with nostalgia for the lost cause.  I think of “the war” as a four year breakdown of civil society, of wholesale bloodshed, of murder, devastation, families indefinitely deprived of loved ones.  What nation might we have become if it had not been for slavery, and for the war that was necessary to make slavery illegal?  Of course that is counterfactual history, material for idle speculation.  We are where we are.

I am particularly sad, depressed even, that now Black citizens live at hazard of being so unlucky to encounter a “bad apple” police officer.  Should the Black person, male or female, by gesture or word cause the “bad apple” police officer to feel a spike of anxiety — the officer may use lethal force to “subdue” the citizen.  This has happened with some frequency since the 1991 Rodney King killing in LA.

The term used by Baudrillard for a response to this fact of life in our country, and particularly for Black citizens is: melancholy.

I have acquaintances who support President Trump, who will vote for him again.  When asked to speak about their understanding of the Minneapolis murder of George Floyd by police, they offer “there are always going to be a few bad apples” theory.  The expectation is that I, being white, without jeopardy, should accept that answer as sufficient.  I find myself in agreement with Black citizens, protesting police brutality, and many other forms of injustice they experience  — by taking to the streets.   The “few bad apples” theory is inadequate.   No citizen should be at risk of summary murder by the police.

I feel melancholy.

Should not the sculpture of three Union Army soldiers commemorating the Civil War be placed at the rear of the Kane County courthouse, as a performative gesture?  The action would signify that we understand that we have not yet fulfilled our obligation to our Black neighbors, to regard them with respect, without assumptions of inferiority.

And would we not be well served — to locate the sculpture of the young female in thrall of the joy of youth to the front of the courthouse; this our ideal, our aspiration of what yet remains for our society to become?