This time of year the landscape is sending mixed signals. Winter officially starts Dec. 21, but the recent extended early cold and precipitation have been decidedly wintery. We missed the first significant snowfall here, but were surprised by an unusual snowstorm during our visit to family in Maryland. Our youngest granddaughter did a fine imitation of a twirling snowflake as she danced along to pre-school. We watched a young red fox in the neighbor’s yard rolling and playing in the snow, pouncing and prancing as he enjoyed the surprise. The exuberance of his gamboling was contagious.
On the other hand, when we returned to New England, some of the squirrels and birds did not seem so pleased with the strong freezing winds, the ice, and blowing snow bursts. The trees, bent and shaking in the wind, had already lost their snowy decorations and seemed agitated. Do we face snow joy or snowy threat?
Our national landscape offers no such ambiguity. Just as the forest bare of leaves reveals the broken branches, the choking vines, and the rock ribs of the landscape, the camouflage is off the cruelty, illegality, greed, destructivity, bigotry and misogyny of this administration. The damage to our nation is more visible every day.
In any category our president has revealed his true self. Grotesque self-dealing masquerades as economic policy, weaking our base economy but enriching the president’s family by billions of dollars in one year. It’s hard to convincingly sell Islam as the enemy when some of your biggest deals are with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Arabic countries. The murder of survivors of an illegal strike on fishing boats in open seas contradicts all international rules even if we were at war, which we are not. All the strikes killing over 90 people so far have been illegal. But clearly laws are of no interest to this administration which has defied court orders and “pardoned” countless people convicted by juries of endangering our government, perpetrating graft, or cheating and stealing from people. I never expected to write a word about condoms but the recently released photo from the Epstein estate with the president’s face on custom condoms with an unrepeatable slogan reveals the toxic misogyny and egotism at work here. The so- called peace plan dropped on Ukraine like one of Russia’s bombs demonstrates how our president, like a dog rolling over in subservience to a perceived superior, has presented his belly to Putin, endangering Ukraine, all of Europe, and our own sovereignty. The overt racism now casually repeated about people of color, and acted out by masked ICE agents, is no longer couched in any disguise.
Too many of our fellow citizens have been misled by claims that all government is bad and constrains their hopes and aspirations. The successful support systems like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and many others have been poorly explained and understood. Sadly, now we can see clearly what happens when crucial government support like health care subsidies, school support, science-based research, protections from poisons and monopolies, and forward-looking manufacturing incentives are swept away. People are suffering, children and elders are sickening, people will die.
The snow can obscure for a time, but winter’s stark glare reveals all. In a time when people in power lie with impunity, when our so-called leaders accuse others of the very abuses they amass, when up seems down, the winter is giving us an inverted gift. All is clear. Now no matter what deflections are tried, what snow-jobs are stirred up, we know the truth.
Winter offers us the lure of hibernation. Instead, let’s take different lessons from winter. Be the fox, revel in those moments of joy. Be the boulders, the strength and backbone shaping the landscape. Be the trees, flexible under stress but rooted and durable. Be the wind: create a relentless gale of resistance.
Judy Wagner lives in Northfield.