At the End of the Decade
Right Here, Right Now, Just This
Bertolt Brecht in his provocative poem called “Motto” asks the question…
“In [the] dark times will there also be singing?”
And he responds to his own question:
“Yes, there will be singing. /About the dark times.”
What will we remember about 2010? Next month, a year from now, in 2110?
There’s plenty of evidence of the dark times, crises everywhere, sorrow everywhere, slaughter and suffering and undeserved harm—if people aren’t dying unnecessarily in one place, then they’re dying miserably someplace else—and perhaps that’s the legacy: cholera in Haiti, police torture in Chicago, BP, the midterms, Tea Party triumphalism, the vicious privatization of the public space, the dramatic failure of the Obama administration to live