I have been thinking of “unintended consequences”. There seem to be a lot of them bubbling up but most people are not recognizing them for what they are. At first they seem random and disconnected but when you step back and look at them patterns begin to emerge.
In the United State assimilation is often viewed as a melting pot. You lose your past and become something new. However, not all of the old melts away, and others notice the differences. If you are of a different skin tone, the melting always leaves a tint of difference that can not be overcome. If your origins worry you, the tint of difference carries forward forever. No matter how well you learn to lose your accent, learn a new posture, push to succeed, you know you never really fit in, you are not “one of them” even when you tell the world you are.
I think of the little orange haired boy who has denied is his past, rose to high office only to fall into the legal system he had disabused for years. Suddenly, it was as if the finger was pulled from the dyke on the Rhine river in Germany and the fertile plains were flooded and everyone was up to their knees in mud and slime. His friends and associates have blazed a path to prison and convictions. It is now spreading across the political spectrum. Suddenly everyone was demanding ethics and accountability. Why?
We are looking for leaders who understand “power with” rather than simply acting from “power over.” So there is no longer a safe place – past indiscretions are now being placed on people and accountability is being demanded. The system that kept these accusations at bay has been washed away when the little orange haired boy had his finger pulled from the dyke by a criminal conviction. The low lands of politics are now flooded, the slime and the rot are floating to the top and the whole world can see and smell it.
Is there anyone interested in rebuilding the dyke? Might it be rebuilt in such a way that those on the plains are able to thrive, using the compost of the past to feed a new vision of equity, inclusion and service that will allow us all to thrive?
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