People Don’t Want to Be Warned
After more than 3000 years, I have finally come to the conclusion that there was never any need for Apollo to curse Cassandra, the seer of Troy, with always being accurate but never being believed; she was never going to be trusted anyway. No one wants to listen to warnings.
It has been more than six years of warnings about the threat that Donald Trump poses to democracy, and two impeachments and a coup later, we are watching him rebuild again without interference because the people in power would prefer to think that the warnings we have received — both metaphoric and literal — aren’t true.
To listen to the warnings would mean to change the system, so that the progenitors of the ongoing crisis can’t use the mechanics of power to further sabotage the majority or entrench themselves permanently.
Photo by Brad Starkey on Unsplash
Changing the system would mean abandoning the myth that this is the way things have always been, and the way things have always been is enough. Abandoning that myth would cause the whole cavalcade of myths to crumble, and possibly unmake the American Dream and everything built atop its shaky foundation.
And we can’t have that, can we?
So here we are, watching the snake consume itself, insisting that what is very obviously happening is somehow definitely not happening, and everybody should stay calm.
On the right, they want us to turn away because it accommodates and eases their malicious efforts to tear apart representative multiracial democracy, as creaky and limited as it is. On the left, they just want to believe in happy endings and solutions without conflict. They don’t like struggle and would prefer comfort, and will reward anyone who gives it to them even if it clouds their judgment.
What no one wants to hear is that this empire of false democracy has met the inevitable truth of evolution: we must now adapt, or die.
We’ve been put to this test over and over again, and we have, even against our desires, dragged ourselves into evolution. We have made small steps and large leaps towards the final form that this country needs to be — a repentant, fully developed multiracial democracy. We cannot continue to be torn between supremacy and equality; we cannot exist in an eternal war. We can pretend that this is not our only solution, but then we’d have to turn our eyes away from the flashing red lights all over the national dashboard.
Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil. Violate the last with the truth of an alarm, and people will revert to the other two. Because people don’t want to be warned. They just want to be saved.
