Month in Review: August

I've been unexpectedly busy this summer with work and other things and have unfortunately had almost no time at all to do any reading or drawing. I'm disappointed to have fallen short of my goal to complete my story by the end of June. At this rate, I can only hope it is completed by the end of the year. 

I had begun a few books in August, but I figure I may as well leave this month a blank and put those books on next month's review. 

This year has been a very bleak, but August may have been the nadir, at least for me. As bi-partisan support for BLM continued to wane and, like everything in this country, become weaponized for political purposes so too did any hope that this country might be able to unify around some common good. America is fractured and the various splinters have so calcified that there is no hope, at least for the foreseeable future, that they could ever grow back into a whole. Given the malfeasance of the Republican party, it seems quite likely that we will have four more years of fascism. If 45 does not win the election outright, then it will most likely be contested, brought to the Supreme Court and, well, I have no illusions on how that that scenario will play out.

I fear the human project has run its course. 

Growing up in a Christian home, I was told by my youth leaders and other church leaders, that we were in a culture war. We were called on to be martyrs. Christian bookstores were lined with books on the end times. The Left Behind series was very popular. When you convince congregations that secular liberals kill babies it isn't hard to start a culture war. I don't go to church much anymore. I have a kind of spirituality, but it is rooted in the arts and sciences. I have no hope or concern for the afterlife. Still, my wife attends church and wants our Lily to as well. I don't entirely mind, Lily is only five and she may as well learn about religion. With the pandemic going on though, she just attends zoom Bible studies. Listening in on one the other day I heard Lily's Sunday school teacher say that we were at war with the world. It was weird hearing those words said again, when the country was quite literally on the brink of real war. 

So, it seems, we are at war. Once the guns begin to come out in earnest I wonder what Christians will think of this war they've been anticipating for so long. It will undoubtedly be much uglier than its advocates expect. The sides will be murkier too. The Christians, I hope, will feel uncomfortable having Neo-Nazis and the KKK as bedfellows. 

But whatever fighting happening breaks out after the election will be a mere gentle prelude to what will come once climate change kicks in in earnest.

The forest fires and storms we are seeing now are only the beginnings of climate change. Things will get much worse. As the oceans acidify, as the global crop yield decreases as population increases, as the habitably areas shrink and migration grows, we will find ourselves in an increasingly cramped planet with fewer and fewer resources. 

And with so little trust among each other, with so little willingness to work together, I don't see how we will be able to pull through this. It would require the cooperation of all nations, around the world. It would require a kind of massive mobilization and self-sacrifice unseen in human history. And like the pandemic, the longer we wait the more difficult this project will become. I fear that the game is already lost.