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Survivor guilt expunged

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By the end of the 1980s, I was the chair of the board of the Lambda Sobriety Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We were — and still are as individuals — living a life of daily challenge and recovery from the wounds created by chronic addictions and not incidentally internalized homophobia that had hung over our heads for all the years of our lives. A tough bunch of people, frankly, and when AIDs devastated our ranks, we were anguished beyond telling. How could it be that this disease took so many lives before our horrified eyes. We did everything we could to comfort those who faded away and we pushed hard to delegitimize  harsh cultural realities that made our efforts exponentially more difficult.

When the spinmeisters around Hillary Clinton and the former first lady herself  tried to put some sort of posthoc lipstick on the pig that was the Reagan administration’s contumely and ridicule in those years, I was glad to see the Human Rights Campaign eat their sycophantic words here in 2016.  Fatuous support of a crass opportunist whose lust for power is obvious is not only to be found in Donald Trump’s vicinity. The Democratic National Committee is deeply soiled as well and our country now experiences odious realities magnified by a gleeful and corrupt forth estate who profit from this increasingly bloody mess.

Shall the spirit of Huey Long rise from the grave and shatter our fragile attempts at community? Shall the racist intransigence now on open display in the Congress of the United States rekindle the separatist passions of the American Civil War? Shall a fading and utterly ignorant minority intimidate our thinking world by force of arms?

Where is love and compassion in these latter days? How do we who have survived  build a new and lasting edifice that embraces the cultural diversity that is the most precious hallmark of the “Great American Experiment”? A helpful hint — look to the indigenous peoples of this blue marble who have outlasted empires and genocidal maniacs. Have a little humility and walk in these others’ shoes. Survivor guilt need not be the force that drives us if we come to a better understanding of our place in the grand scheme of life that surrounds us at every turn.


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