Dance to the music, because the world is watching...

I arrived home from class on Friday in time for a late lunch. The class had been the final one in a 4-week session of a new course that was great fun to co-facilitate with my teaching partner, Deborah Schnitzer. The 12 women (it is almost always women; where are the men?) — these women around the table were eager to play with words and be in community with other writers looking for some creative fun. We were all sad for it to end. 

One never knows at the start of something new how it will unfold or how it will wrap up, but, if we are lucky, each person dives in to participate honourably in the collective endeavour, whatever it may be. When it comes together, it is great. When it falls apart, it can be bad. 

In my kitchen, as I prepared and ate my late lunch after class on Friday (February 28), what I witnessed on my screen was colossally bad.

I had seen a news update flash across my phone as I packed up from class, so it was those barest of details that caused me to watch the live news coverage of the fallout from the incendiary meeting in the Oval Office between three powerful men (Trump, Vance, Zelensky), one of whom is fighting for the life of his country.

My food was good but it was difficult to eat as I saw unfold on my screen a display of despicable rudeness, of loud flaunting of power-over, of vile raw privilege; in short, I saw the world order — as I have known it my entire life — be deliberately shredded by two men in front of international media cameras. “This will make great television,” said Trump, when he was done.

My lunch sat heavy in my gut.

I could not believe what I was seeing, yet there it was. On my screen. Maybe on yours, too. Recorded live. Replayed endlessly. Experts continue to comment and analyze, so I don’t need to here, but I do continue to wonder and worry about where this will end. 

I can hardly bear to contemplate where it will end. 

Where two of those powerful men are taking the world.

I cannot shake the metaphor of ballroom dancing from my mind: Like so many things, when two people come together on the dance floor to move to the music in a way that both embodies and enhances it, it is pure joy to watch and to experience. The unspoken yet logically necessary rule is that if the music is suitable for a waltz, then it’s a waltz the dancers must — and will — execute. There is no tolerance for waltzing to a foxtrot or jiving to a samba. The dancers understand this and deliver their best effort in time with the music being played. Each couple is sharing the dance floor with a larger collective, with others moving in their own way to the same music. Therefore, the understanding is that, even if one couple is extraordinary — even exceptional, the collective enables and supports the overall event to take place, to be enjoyed by all. Were one couple to highjack the dance floor, I can imagine the judges would disqualify them.

The political world order has been playing a largely predictable waltz for decades, but since the new Republican Administration took office in Washington, D.C. on January 20th, the most powerful leader and his deputy have been doing a wild interpretive dance to that music — and only they, it seems, know the steps.

Where were the judges on Friday?

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo by Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash