The Chapter of "Loss" in Life

 It is a bit of a surprise to realize and begin to understand I am experiencing loss again.  It should not be surprising.  We have been surrounded by disease, death, and their ensuing loss for over two years.  In the newly adopted aesthetic of American media we have focused on the shock value of Covid 19.  Scaring the shit out of Americans is commonplace, and any semblance of logical contemplation and attempted understanding has been put by the wayside.  America no longer wants to preen intelligent, thoughtful, Christian citizens.  Instead our country covertly has adopted scare tactics reminiscent of Nazi Germany.  It has been the brazen voice and orange coif of Donald Trump who embraced and championed this extremism.  There could be no finer example of a blow hard in American history, and yet Mr. Orange, in his falsely proclaimed campaign to "Make America Great" has done nothing but assault America and her freedom.  Any viable and constructive tenant of American democracy has been undermined.  Sprinkle Covid over the top and you have a mash of the most insidious and inciting rhetoric in our lifetime.  What has been the purpose of this assault?  There is no more clear answer than "Ethnic Cleansing."  Listen to what Trump has said, and he told us how entitlements were bogging down the American economy.  "Let's get rid of old people.  Let's get rid of the prisoners.  Let's get rid of anyone who puts a strain on the flowing dollars to rich Republicans."  What Trump has forgotten is that we are a human race, and money does not just materialize.  For the extreme rich (of whom traditionally we thought of as virtuous in the evolution and development of America), they live is such a bubble that they have forgotten at a grass roots level of existence money still needs to be earned.  Evidently there is so much money flowing in their coffers, total elimination of the rest of the population isn't out of the question.  I would be bold enough to say that it is their plan, and it is called "Ethnic Cleansing."  It has happened many times, and we need to remember.  We need to remember an evil dictator in Germany rounded up harmless Jews and shipped them in cattle cars to gas chambers disguised as showers at Auschwitz.  The Holocaust was real, and it was a stones throw away from now.  Slobodan Milosevic accomplished the same thing in Bosnia, and the world with the help of the Dayton Accords instigated by Bill Clinton, tried and convicted him of war crimes at the International Tribunal at the Hague.  He died in prison.  As we live and breathe Vladimir Putin is slaughtering harmless Ukrainians.  I have strayed from my original thread, but scaring common folk has become the way of the American media.  The common folk who are old enough and intelligent enough to discern the difference between good and evil are few, and this is what is titillating my sense of loss.  My opening sentence to this blog entry was going to be, "I should be happy to have experienced loss before, because it will not be unfamiliar to me now."  This newer sense of loss has been elusive, and it is possible I have not allowed it to come to fruition.  Having recovered from severe loss your new mission statement becomes survival at all cost.  The deeply yearning and sorrowful shadow is as strong as before, but it has been replaced as the most necessary component of your emotional construct.  I will admit I have been in turmoil, because my creative and artistic voice has been quiet.  It has been quiet, because if I opened my Pandora's box of real emotion, it could be overwhelming.  Perhaps that is what has happened.  Reality has emerged, and it is sad.  What is this newly recognized reality?  First Covid 19 has dealt a heinous blow to humanity.  The death toll is great, and we have watched those around us die continuously since Covid's emergence.  To pause and consider the number of notable citizens who have succumbed to this disease is startling.  With their conspicuous absence a quick and hearty wave of capitalism has begun.  Fayetteville in particular, with her second largest military presence in all American cities, quickly has retooled available real estate.  This disease for the real estate market has been a tremendous boon, and the transformation of old Fayetteville into military Fayetteville is stark and upsetting.  Instead of recognizing and appreciating Fayetteville's existing infrastructure, developers are urgent to purchase and develop every available morsel of dirt, tree, and stream to fill their pockets.  We literally are watching Fayetteville disappear and get replaced with gingerbread housing sold quickly and opportunistically to landlocked military comrades.  It is an enticing bundle.  Hefty monthly housing stipends siphoned right back into the pockets of the local developers.  It is win win for them.  It is not for existing residents of Fayetteville.  With this influx of new military blood (and I am not discounting its viability), the history of Fayetteville is being lost.  It is not reasonable to compare the attributes of UNC educated professionals with grunt G.I.'s.  While the housing market and to a large extent the entire Fayetteville economy relies upon military dollars, malcontent, gung-ho, high school drop outs cannot replace Fayetteville heritage and culture.  They bring with themselves the limited education they have, and that means a severely limited ability to appreciate finer things.  Fayetteville always has been a dichotomy, but the historical foundations of Fayetteville are eroding.  The loss of this consciousness is the reality which has beset me.  I largely have ignored this change, and unconsciously have vowed to continue with my own interests unfettered.  As I look around and realize my own personal sentiments no longer are reinforced, it is a large pill to swallow.  Loss is nothing to laugh at, and it is tangible.  If you live the transient military lifestyle and are taught to be ambulatory and superficial, perhaps not growing roots is appropriate.  When you have planted roots, watching your community disappear is disheartening.