Troubles, we’ve got troubles, as so much unravels

By Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California — A recent New Yorker cartoon depicts a taciturn President Obama peering out the door of his private White House bedroom and speaking to two little trick-or-treaters:  “I’ll give you all the candy you want if you just tell me how you got past the Secret Service agents outside.

An unforgivably vulnerable presidential family, the creeping septicity of Ebola (and other new and dreadful contagions), the raging, unchecked spread and medieval horror of ISIS, the apparent futility of airstrikes and alliances, the startling resurrection of racial conflict in America—some refer to this post-9/11, unwelcome, even nightmarish situation as “the great unraveling.”

And a second layer of our sense of helplessness is marked by the coordinates of deeply disturbing and unacceptable comportment patterns (some potentially criminal) in professional and college football; remarkable personal indulgence, much of it abusive, across the spectrum of organized sports; cosmic cynicism about government and the attendant reluctance of principled people to even seek public office; unparalleled levels of teenage sexual and nihilistic behavior; and an embedded sense of mediocrity in our expectations for the arts, culture, and for a peaceful personal existence with enough money to retire.

There are no heroes; we haven’t actually won a war since 1945; we long for statesmanlike leaders; we assume that the legislatures, the banks, the stores, the airlines, and pharmaceutical companies will gouge and screw us.  We sleep with lies and wake up to a numbingly repetitive cycle of scary news that we watch on an assortment of overpriced and decidedly unnecessary devices that have turned us into cyber-zombies.

It’s as life has become a bad movie.  In fact, just sit through the din and viciousness and sexual starkness of nearly every preview in the multiplex.   One recalls the title of the 1966 Broadway musical, Stop the World—I Want to Get Off.  It resonates.

So what should we do?  Gain some perspective and gather in the wisdom of history.  Here are some points to consider:

Yes, the Secret Service appears weedy, but when we wax nostalgic, it’s hard to forget that it failed catastrophically in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963—during an era subject to notorious romanticism.

Nobody ever really liked Congress.  They’re just outdoing themselves these days in chicanery and laziness and we aren’t angry enough about it and we respond by not going to the polls as responsible citizens who do more than watch those banal TV ads.  We are as illiterate as the politicos are disingenuous.

Fifty-nine million people died, most in unimaginably terrifying ways, between 1939 and 1945; we survived World War II and we have still never seen the likes of it since.  Intractable enemies such as Germany and Japan are now close allies of the United States and the United Kingdom; we are driving their cars and they are eating our fast food.

The medical profession has made mind-boggling advances in cardiovascular management, the eradication of so many cancers, the control of plagues such as HIV, and the miraculous science of transplants.   Life is good; it’s just too long and too expensive.

We yearn for answers but we leave the same bums in charge.  We long for heroes when we should be educating teachers.

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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer based in the San Diego suburb of Encinitas, California.  He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com