Girl Talk

There's a new world order, right? We're going to make America great again, right?

Then, why are so many people so very afraid? And why do so few people seem to care?

I've been thinking a lot about that. Where the hell do I get the idea that people shouldn't be afraid? The idea, not that we should help each other, but that we do?

It isn't Christianity; I've only rightly been able to count myself among the faithful since 2009. This conviction goes back farther than that. I've done more than just feel it.

I've lived it.

People used to help each other. People used to be on the lookout for folks in trouble -- not so they could prey upon them, but so they could lend a hand. And, even though I've lived it, my memories of it go back even farther.

This dynamic is plainly shown in the movies of the 1930s and 40s. People who have never even met before help each other through doorways, through car trouble, through the sudden realization that someone doesn't have a nickel for the phone. It's no accident that these films were made to appeal to a largely female audience. Some were even written by women, or based on source material from women novelists and playwrights.

I don't know how those movies were reviewed. I do know that the 1980s saw the dawning of a brutal new age during which Americans, at least, stopped helping each other, and started helping themselves.

Women writers and musicians began to comment obliquely on this phenomenon in the 1990s. They sang songs about helping, about comforting; and about how no one had helped them through abuse and abandonment.

Predictably, male critics savaged these efforts. It had been "morning in America" for a decade or more, and you could damn well get along by yourself.

And now, we're here. 

Here's what I have to say about that:

To hell with the critics; we need help and we need to help. We need people to start thinking like this again. 

Here's October Project with "Eyes of Mercy".