Either my perception is badly blunted, or I am living in the wrong country.
My life is so odd, so unlike what I am told is pervasive out there.
Here it is, in my office I interact five days a week with minorities, and with Jews and gentiles. Not to mention, every week I am in Safeway, King Soopers, East Side Kosher Deli, Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Rosenberg’s Kosher, a gym and a synagogue. In recent weeks I have also interacted with the police and the homeless, and been in the Dept. of Motor Vehicles, Home Depot, Signature Offset, the US Post Office and a vaccine center. Throughout, I have seen people of many ethnicities, skin colors, mental abilities, ages, genders, religions, marital states; and — here is where I am so odd — I have not witnessed one single person demean another person! No nasty comments. No bigoted remarks. No evidence of prejudice. No put downs.
I have witnessed a colorblind country.
I must be living in the wrong country.
Or, maybe, to be appropriately deferential to the social scientists of the day, to the journalistic commentators who know more than I do and the political leaders who have a superior grasp of reality, I am secluded. I live in an unrepresentative segment of the country. My slice of reality has it all wrong: people get along. People do not evidently find the differences between them significant. People speak kindly to each other.
Strange, very strange, in what the authorities assure us is a country gone wrong, a country of cohesiveness cancelled.
Studies show that incidents of anti-Semitism are on the rise and so are incidents of bigotry against other minorities. The question is: What is dominant in our country? Is it the bigotry or is it the pervasive reality I see every day? Has the whole country actually gone over the edge?
I don’t think so, but perhaps that is because there is one location I do not visit any more than absolutely necessary: social media. There, kids get bullied, hate is rampant and so are knee jerk reactions. As for personal connections they might nurture, I prefer personal connections in person or at least via live voice. They are more humanizing and less given to the expression of hostility, exaggeration and alternative personalities eased by these media. To me at least, life is sweeter and more genuine off the social media platforms, just taking in life in Colorado. It usually has a calming effect.
Of course, Colorado is not perfect. Evil invades our soothing kingdom — the evil of a mass shooting. As much as diversity comes natural us, we are not cut off from “out there.” We suffer from evil. We lose good people. We mourn. We remember. We in Colorado know we are stigmatized by a single word, a metonymy, “Columbine”; and perhaps now by another word, “Boulder.”
We search for causes of mass shootings and for ways to prevent recurrences. We agonize. We think. Like the rest of the country, we argue over public policies, such as guns.
Mostly, however, we do it together.
Because, for us, “together” is not just a reaction to a horror, not just an ephemeral moment when evil unites us, when emotions smother differences. For us, “together” is not just a passing thing. For us, civility, friendliness, kindness, colorblind perception and behavior remain.
Not that Colorado is Paradise. We are still one of the lowest states in spending on mental health. We can’t quite figure out how to work together as both an urban state and an agricultural state. We haven’t addressed our infrastructure, mainly roads, in decades. We have a state court system that suppresses the misbehavior of judges, and then cries foul when the media shine a light on it. We have mayors and governors who think that unfettered population density, which degrades quality of life, is quality of life. We face long-term challenges over water, whose supply is stressed by all the growth, and over energy, which is a major employer yet comes with environmental costs. So no, we are not perfect. Still, I ask: What is pervasive in Colorado? The problems, or the positives? I do not notice naysayers moving out of the state.
There is a reason why people flock to Colorado, why Colorado will gain a Congressional seat in this census, and why we gained one in the previous census, and also in the census before that.
I like living in the wrong country.
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg may be reached at [email protected].
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