A Sharp Spoke of the Wheel

As far as we know, the social cycle theory goes back at least as far as ancient Greece. Heck, even the word cycle comes from the ancient Greek word kyklos, which implies that they were looking back at other cultures and civilizations we don’t know much of anything about, and coming to the same conclusions.

Depressing, and interesting. Other philosophers have seen the pattern, commented on it, bemoaned its existence, theorized ways to break it. Good ol’ Karl Marx, bless his fuzzy heart, talked about breaking it to usher in that utopia. Unfortunately for him, and us, I don’t think he looked at all the data. How many cycles have we gone through, that we know of? The implication that the attempt to break the cycle may accelerate it, or is already baked into the cycle as a feature, is unsettling. And we’re sitting here on the cusp of another downturn, when those of us who remember World War II are freaking out, wondering how memory can be so short and what the blipping heck is wrong with people??

Well, there are a few problems. First, have you met people? Laziness is our biggest export, followed by short-sightedness. If someone else claims they want to do our thinking for us, claims they have a plan, we usually let them. Even when the evidence comes back to the contrary, we let them continue to ruin everything. Look at Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, it’s all about the charismatic speakers swaying the crowd back and forth with their grand speeches. Yep, check.

Secondly, people get soft in a time of no war and plentiful stuff. With all the sudden disposable income that came with the tech boom, it put a lot of money in locations that were hard to track by old metrics. When you’re not being squeezed by economic pressures, people can afford to relax standards. Not going to war? Enough money for junk food? Don’t have to be kicked out of the nest, no economic reason to leave? College standards relaxed or subverted? Then let the kids stay. And stay. And stay. And soon they can’t leave because the price of rent skyrockets, but the parents are still stuck in pre-Reaganomics, and don’t see the very real problems that are out there. Still waiting for that trickle down, and no one warned us it was the Rio Grande. (The Rio’s a cement-lined gutter for most of its length now, because every city on the way takes what it wants for their water supply. You can imagine how well that works.)

Yep, check again.

But the politics? Why does Europe laugh at us, where our version of “liberal” is actually “centrist,” and real liberals don’t exist?

We used to have them. They were loud, and proud, and spoke out for their rights, and therefore all our rights. We had an amazingly active chapter on our campus, and we were a small liberal arts Christian college! What happened?

Remember AIDS?

I was in college when the fear was peaking. By that point, we knew how it was transmitted, and kind of what methods it was using. But there was no cure. AZT was in use, but there were no definitive results yet, and blood tests were quite expensive for students. It certainly had a chilling effect on the free love the boomers were whinging about at colleges, where they couldn’t control their pwecious wecious diddums. Add in that it was killing off the “bad” people, so they didn’t care to do the research on curing it earlier. Sound familiar? (Oh, yeah, and check.)

Only when diseases – who don’t care about genitalia, or morals, or bank accounts – took out an innocent person whose parents took their outrage to the media, did the groundswell of anger finally galvanize the government to action. Ryan White, you are remembered. Gotta love those leopards, when they finally start eating the right faces.

But by then, all of the gay liberals, the impetus behind Act Up and gay rights laws, and a huge majority of the artists and intelligentsia, were gone. All that’s left of many are their squares on the world’s largest quilt, most of which is stored away and forgotten.

We still miss you, Keith Haring.

And as much as I really didn’t / don’t care for either Elizabeth Taylor or Madonna, the work that both ladies did within the AIDS-riddled community was amazing and wonderful. Blah blah Burton and Liz’ extensive jewelry collection (and I’ve seen her jewels first hand, they’re glorious!), it was her work putting her own money on the line that got stuff going.

Two or three generations of history, rich culture, a tapestry of contributions to art and theater and sciences and social community, gone.

But, hey, the ones in the government didn’t care, because they were leaning on their false morals in smug righteousness.

Until, of course, the hypocrites literally brought it home. Funny how tunes changed when it was their face being eaten by the leopards.

Pandemics do not recognize friend or foe. And sometimes the board is wiped clean, whether good or evil, and nature starts over.

Hope changes shape in the downhill slide. I’ve gotten over a half century of experiences and skills under my belt, and it still won’t be enough. I’ve also racked up some serious health conditions that include a restricted diet and meds. When the inevitable restrictions happen, and prices skyrocket, I likely won’t survive long.

So why even try?

Because there are kids. I say “kids,” thought some are adults now. I am in a position to get some really cool people out of the danger zones and to a place of relative safety. We may move, we may not, but we’re ready to roll and help get some stuck in the moral war zones un-stuck. Hubby and I have decided that if we were given the opportunity to emigrate, we’d hand off the golden ticket to others who deserve the chance at a good life. Some are LGTBQ+, some are too young to make those choices yet, some are just normal kids, but they deserve a chance.

They may not get it. I likely won’t live to see it. We may all be wiped from the board. But by God, I’m going to try. And to hell with these false religious “leaders,” because I recall a verse or two about whitewashed tombs.

Hope can be given away. Hope can change from “I hope I’m successful by last century’s standards” to “I hope I survive this madness.” Times like this tend to strip away the lies and show you what’s really important.

I’ve chosen my hand-picked family, the ones I’ve helped raise, teach, nurture, encourage.

I worked in the back rooms when AIDS hit. I encouraged hand washing and mask wearing and vaccinations with COVID. Three more purging diseases loom on the horizon, like hurricanes lining up for a shot at the mainland. But global warming doesn’t exist either, does it?

We effed around, and now we’re finding out.

And I would suggest that losing our true liberal left during the AIDS crisis has a direct correlation to our predicament now. Losing those voices, screaming for justice, grown hoarse and tired with the disease ravaging their bodies, took its toll on all of us. And now we pay for their neglected condition, compounded by COVID’s losses. One of the most talented stained glass artists of this century was lost in the first lockdown, trapped in a hospital as he recovered from a heart condition.

Who else have we lost?

What will we lose today? Tomorrow?

The leopards are stalking.

What will you do?