America the Beautiful

The hangman’s noose seems to be making a comeback here in America. From Jena Louisiana, all the way to a professors’ door at Columbia University two days ago, this symbol of racism in the United States has been popping up in a string of copycat like occurrences recently. It’s another reminder of the lingering racism in our country. The noose put outside the black female professors door yesterday brings up both the racism and sexism that are still so prevalent in our patriarchal land.

While we dreamily pretend that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could win a presidential election in our fine country here, our sick culture is busy sending us reminders that we have our heads firmly stuck in the ground. There is so much work to be done to repair our social fabric, yet we wander around blindly hiding behind a shield of political correctness which keeps us uncomfortable saying anything “sensitive” while the truth is that we still live in a country where sexism and racism run rampant.

And now we are stuck in a situation where the two Democratic frontrunners are a black man and a woman, and nobody is coming out and asking how on earth a woman or a person of color is going to win a presidential election in a country where nooses show up on female professors’ doors at one of our most prestigious University’s?

Here in Aspen, we are busy building a little exclusive town, squeezing out skinny pockets with parking rates of 11 dollars per 4 hours of parking that don’t make a damn difference to rich people, but are a huge penalty on people who only make twelve dollars an hour and have to pay eleven dollars for a hamburger at the end of the day if they want to eat in the same town that they work; and then they have to spend five dollars per beer. We are squeezing the life and personality out of our town by shutting down affordable bars and restaurants and replacing them with little bastions of exclusivity, membership only clubs and expensive restaurants and bars with bouncers to make sure you look like you can fit the bill and sport the vibe of ignorant wealth and the cult of holier than thou. This is about class just as much as the nooses are about racism and all the sexual harassment and other misogynistic behavior are about sexism. It goes all the way from way up here at the top of the pyramid in Aspen, down to the very heartland of America, where sexism and racism run even more rampant than in the educated class, and it all adds up to an America with its head firmly stuck in the sand, still acting out of its old ignorances, and busily denying that “yes, this is really happening.”

Down in the river, the fall leaves are dancing in the water. Crows are circling overhead trying to warn us about greedhead developers and the implosion of the society of the self-obsessed. Looking around at a big human family at war with itself, the creatures of the sky watch their habitat disappear. The crows hop around on our rooftops. I can hear their claws whispering and clattering on the shingles.