Rabbit Redux

And doing my part

It’s amazing how things have changed.

Not quite two months ago I wrote a parable for this Substack, and then decided I wanted to try and publish it. I held it back from here and took it to the “get your stuff published” guy I was in a class with.

He changed it so completely that it was no longer a parable, nor a piece I wanted to shop.

The piece started at around 1,400 words, but I then sent it to a couple of places that required no more than 700-word pieces, so I edited it. They declined.

I shared it with writing friends, and one writing mentor said she liked it, but that it was confusing going between the two different parallels of rabbits and Argentina to the current situation, so I might try and tighten that up.

And then Biden stepped aside, opened the windows, and let a huge rush of fresh air blow through the place. Suddenly there was energy, and hope, and motivation.

Suddenly I didn’t feel the strong need to get the parable out there.

But I said I’d share it, and I’d like to anyway, even though now I’m sharing it with a much different feeling, one of possibility rather than resignation.

---

We Are American Rabbits

Even walking my dog, I can’t escape our country’s troubles. 

Today there must have been some rabbit conference going on. The streets were crowded with groups of them congregating in the middle of the roads and sidewalks, clearly discussing something important. What was not important, apparently, was the predator approaching. My dog and I walked toward them, getting very close. They’d look, eye us up and down, and go back to their rabbit conversation. 

The thought was so loud in my head I almost looked around to see who’d said it: “These are such American rabbits.” 

By this I meant that they are utterly unused to actual predators. Sure, they’re paranoid and skittish, but they don’t react to what’s making them jumpy with any kind of useful response. When a car comes they move at the last minute. They allow a dog to get within a couple of feet before running. Dogs on a leash are not a threat, and they know it.

”I don’t understand how people can be doing this,” said my ninety-three year-old father the other day. 

He was talking about the election. While we disagree about the Democratic candidate’s worthiness, we both understand that Trump’s machine is not merely a different choice. 

My father’s family escaped a dictator in Spain and landed in the lap of a dictator in Argentina. Perón killed and imprisoned thousands of dissidents and academics. He welcomed Nazis after World War II. But he strengthened trade unions and, with his wife Eva’s influence, women’s suffrage. He was fantastically popular with the voters. His policies, and then his overthrow, opened the door to the brutal era of the Los Desaparecidos, the disappeareds. It was a living nightmare to the people who the week before had gone to the movies, restaurants, to school, and to work, suddenly being kidnapped, tortured, and murdered. It happened every day and night, people like you and me, dragged from their beds, or stopped at their front doors, so close to making it home. These were ordinary citizens: professors, students, shopkeepers, musicians, anyone, deemed “leftists” by the government for having education or contrary beliefs to the party line. Those in power got very rich.

The last war to be fought on US soil was the Civil War, where everybody got a prize so nobody’s feelings would be hurt.

We have not noticed, as a country, how terrible our education has become. We have not paid attention to our own poverty and ignorance. We will pay into a GoFundMe for someone’s treatment but not change our onerous health care system. We’ve failed to acknowledge the foundational racism at our core, which prevents us from healing and flourishing. 

But as flawed and broken as this country is, it is also unique. It has been, to many, a safe harbor. To a first generation American who grew up holding the meager trinkets brought from other lands, and hearing the stories of very real political monsters, it is unthinkable that we are welcoming those monsters into our halls of government.

“We may not have another election as we know it if Trump wins,” I said to a young friend the other day.

He laughed. “Oh come on. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars it won’t be that bad.” 

I’ll bet you a carrot.

We think conspiracies whenever there’s an outcome we don’t like. Trump gave us that. We think everyone and everything can be bought - a corrupt Supreme Court gave us that. We think we’re punishing bad politicians if we withhold a vote and let the other guy win because “our” candidate has done something we can’t support, even something terrible. Who we are punishing are those most vulnerable. We can’t see there is something more terrible eagerly waiting in the wings. 

We can’t accept that a bad choice is sometimes necessary to prevent a catastrophic one.

The men who led the horror in Argentina were not special. They were dreadfully common. There are men like that in power today, and they are unpacking, gloating at our spoiled, naive assuredness.

We are American rabbits, and we don’t believe that the leashes are about to come off.

---

Morning Teaistisms

For every influencer there must be an influenced, and I like to think I’m doing my part.

Of course, I’m always up for a new tea, so when I saw “The tea Taylor Swift drinks to recover from her 3+ hour performances” I knew two things:

1. This was almost certainly bullshit, and

2. I’d be buying some immediately.

It’s pretty good; a little sweet, not too echinacea-y, which is lucky because I suspect I’m allergic to echinacea. Years ago my well-meaning, then-sister-in-law recommended it for a cold, and the more echinacea tea I drank the worse I got. Years later I mentioned it to a doctor, who asked me if I’d ever read up on the side effects of echinacea: headaches, dizziness, skin reactions… and often being stuffed up.

Yeah, I had that. The doctor just looked at me and said, “Maybe next time Nyquil.”

But Taylor would never lie to me, so I had to try it.

I also bought “the viral Dubai chocolate bar” that everyone’s going on about. I did not get it in Dubai, but rather from a chocolatier in Michigan named Konstantin Zsigo. I figured that was exotic enough. The key here is the crunchy kataifi, often mistakenly described as “shredded phyllo dough” but you get the gist, that’s browned in butter until crispy, mixed with pistachio cream, and put into chocolate bars. I chose milk chocolate because I prefer it to dark.

Dark would have been less sweet, and that would have been a good thing. But the texture is fantastic.

And obviously I bought pecan caramels, too. Just to be polite.