Waiting for Godot: a Tale of American Democracy

Ipek Burnett:

And here we are in America. Waiting. Some are waiting for the midterms, some for Mueller, for impeachment. Others are waiting for walls to be built. Waiting for wealth to be theirs. Waiting for America to be great again.

While some are still waiting for justice and equality.

Some, merely for a glimpse of decency and honesty.

It seems as if no matter who or what our Godot is, we are all Vladimirs and Estragons. Weary, we wait. We wait for that which does not arrive.

I like parts of this piece so much! This is very much my experience of the American character: a flaccid sitting on the couch bemoaning the intolerable disappointment of a television show while lacking the initiative to cross the room and pick up the remote.

The most important part of it all is that like Vladimir and Estragon—no matter how estranged, no matter how troubled—we continue to co-exist. For better or worse. Democrats, Republicans, independents. Different races, ages, regions. Those who stand in opposition whether the subject matter is immigration, same-sex marriage, health-care, taxes, climate change, or capitalism. Those who hate each other’s guts, threaten each other’s lives over reproductive or religious rights, gun-control or criminal justice. All of them, all of us. We are bound by that which is the country we call home.

This though, this is just silly. The most important aspect of being an American is remaining bound and co-existing with ignorant and parochial people who feel similarly powerless? This seems to me a sort of a death in life. While I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 30 years I never did get into BDSM and was never drawn to a twelve step program either. When the curtain comes down Vladimir and Estragon remain trapped in the roles they have chosen, but their audience is free to leave the theater.

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