Chaos, Cages, and The Cup
Never mind looking for the United States on the pitch in Russia. I’m struggling to find the country that I know back home.
I’m supposed to be watching the World Cup right now.
It’s what I do, you see.
Every four years I turn both sports-obsessed eyeballs and my ten fingers and one wide-open mouth towards whatever country becomes the World’s stage and I care way too much about giant men kicking a small ball in The Beautiful Game.
I should be writing about the unparalleled brilliance and miserably handsome good looks of Cristiano Ronaldo, or the incredibly turnt fans of Senegal who celebrated their stunning victory by…picking up after themselves(?!?), or making dumb Evita jokes about Lionel Messi.
I should be seeing these other countries and, even though the US didn’t make the cut, I should be feeling my own national pride — the healthy kind that comes from cheering on your flag against another flag in something as sublimely unimportant as sports — rising like the Eastern dawn.
But my mind is as far from Russia as my body, today.
Stop me if this sounds familiar.
I’ve written before about the world intruding on my athletics-based fantasies; how more and more lately I see the flashing blue and red lights of reality in my rearview mirror, coming to pull me over with a breathalyzer to interfere with my sports-drunk euphoria.
I’m in the drunk tank now.
And I’m sobering up the hard way.
With the cheap-carnival-ride spins. And the feverish, snail-crawling chills that slip an oil slick of sweat onto the small of your back even though you’re not really cold at all.
Make no mistake, I’m still tuning in for soccer.
I’m desperately seeking the mental release that world class athletes in pitched struggle for pitch dominance offers me, but I’m only watching on split screen. The action has been relegated to one corner of the screen, that little picture in picture square at the lower right hand of the monitor.
What’s on the main screen? Images like this.
Vicious, bile-inducing snapshots of how far off course we have veered and how perilously thin the shoulder of this winding, backwoods road appears to be.
We are staring over the edge as these unknown territories go blurring by, with our narcoleptic tour guides recklessly stomping on their Godforsaken gas pedal and swilling the kind of noxious, fetid cocktail that only Molotov himself would have any use for.
Pull that image close to yourself. Let it burn into your corneas with sulfuric acidity. We’ve earned this image, our country.
It’s two thousand and eighteen, and our nation has ingested poison.
Grab these moments that you see. These children ripped from families. Ripped from Mother’s and Fathers and siblings and ripped from the very decency that our country purports to stand for. Drink from them like they’re the syrup of ipecac moment that we need.
Let that bitter, throat-closing, choking mixture pull action from within yourself. We cannot be this country any longer. Not like this.
And I do not have time for your politically-minded tsk-tskings, your echoes of internet sentiments. I refuse to get on the treadmill of whataboutisms. Not here. Not now. Not while this vertigo nation stands here with both feet on the precipice.
I refuse to let myself indulge you in debate. Not when it is children in cages and my beautiful flag suddenly blocking the light, casting shadows on my homeland that I so deeply love. And you may attempt to outflank me with your knowledge of policy and your Googled research, but I will not let you argue with me whose fault it is that we hit the iceberg, when I’m more concerned with getting people into a lifeboat. I have no doubt we will have time to try to reconcile matters of the heart and head once we reach higher ground.
Are you shocked? Angry? Scared? Good. We humans are nothing, if not perfect combustion engines. Use that. Burn those fears and that anger as the fuel for change. You can either take that heat and generate motion, or you can burn. I know which I will choose.
Here is the website for the American Civil Liberties Union: Use it.
Here is a way to get in touch with the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services: Use it.
(*Author’s note: as of publication of this piece, it appears that President Trump has reversed course on his previous position and said he would sign an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border. Let’s keep the pressure on to make sure that he does.)
