Remember the talk about “turning the page”? Turns out, we did turn the page. We turned the page back to where we had been instead of forward to something new.
We could have turned the page to write a story of dealing with the climate crisis, instead we turned back to the story of exploiting the Earth for American prosperity.
We could have turned the page to support transgender people and families, instead we turned a page back to when everyone was either a man or a woman, or in hiding.
We could have turned the page to see how the government fulfilled its job of protecting the vulnerable, instead we turned the page back to where the mythology of merit soothed the conscience of the privileged.
We could have turned the page forward where we would have had a female president, instead we turned the page backwards and ended up with a misogynist.
And so on and so on. You can add your own page turners.
It’s a mistake to assume that “turning the page” would have allowed us to read a different book. It’s the same book that began with enslaving laborers, occupying America, and dominating the vulnerable. Turning the page back didn’t bring these stories to mind. Just the opposite, it reinforces our national amnesia.
The politics of joy may not have been sufficient, but joy could have helped us move from denial to recognition of our whole story. The problem is that we have now chosen a past without joy and with only faint hope for the future. Next time, it will be different.
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