I was in middle school four decades ago when the first — and only — shopping mall opened in my native Venango County.
The bustling concourse with a garden plaza, chain department stores and movie theater marked progress and relevance.
Today it still signifies our standing —– diminished and again, isolated.
Who knew then how fickle those shiny retailers would be when globalization got its licks in?
Enterprising local crafters and specialty shops valiantly fill vacated storefronts. But the building shows signs of its age and keeps limited hours.
I tried to lend support on a Sunday at the height of the holiday shopping season only to find some stores would not open until noon and others not at all. There were few people and even less holiday cheer. And the kicker despoiling the mood? Visible from most angles in the long straight main hall, a giant flag shouting #FJB complete with a “Let’s go Brandon” explainer for any who missed the contemptible point.
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In the glass case hawking the flag were items repeating the false claim that the failed, former president, defeated by more than 7 million votes and necessary margins in key swing states, won, along with items displaying the Confederate flag —symbol of a diabolical way of life inimical to American values now a signifier of what, exactly? Especially when flown on the same pole as Old Glory as is the fashion in these parts. I will never understand.
Vendors sell this dreck at roadside stands, flea markets and the like. In lawns, wooden Bigfoot silhouettes and garden gazing balls mingle with flags telling the president, to well, you know what, and worse, like the ones telling you to do the same thing to your feelings.
This militant, violence-tinged mindset is comfortable asserting itself not only in residential neighborhoods and the shopping mall. It's also commodified and charging the air in rural supply stores that sell everything from chicken feed to AR-15-style rifles.
They feature rack after rack of clothing with fetishized 2nd Amendment sloganeering short feet from items bearing soft sayings about Jesus. Who, in this visioning of American values (“God, Guns and Country”) would have done exactly what with an AR?
Talk about a war on Christmas. I am not anti-gun. I come from a long line of gun owners. But these chunks of metal are tools, not articles of faith, and also deadly, thus worthy of nuanced debate and policy when they enable mayhem, human slaughter and needless suffering.
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A few days before the demoralizing mall visit, my husband Jerry and I had been in a restaurant and bar in a touristy area of West Virginia. Like the mall, it was a family spot but somehow felt like hostile territory. For not the first time, we felt the need to lower our voice to discuss the day’s news from Washington.
Across the room, two men displayed the curse word of all curse words on their shirts, including one that also featured that ubiquitous, totemic AR rifle profile. On the wall hung a flag declaring Trump president — in 2021.
This dawn of a new year is meant to be a time of renewal, reflection and reset. As I write this, all the items that bear our family's holiday traditions forward another year are in place. All that’s left is firelight and eggnog, fellowship and celebration.
And yet it’s a tissue-thin veneer of normalcy laid over a sober reality signaled by vulgar political paraphernalia and mounting COVID death toll. This is no simple turning of the page — because that would require life to be moored to something familiar and stable in the first place.
Last year, COVID upended the holidays but the disruption felt bearable because it seemed temporary. Variants make clear it isn’t. Our political divisions hobble our ability to confront this ever-evolving crisis with the resolve and unity it demands. Worse, they threaten to undo us as a people — a fragile light to the world.
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Our ability to enable liberty for all hinges on our capacity to honor difference, exercise tolerance and defend the principles that allow us to live together in freedom. Our system relies on a shared plane of truth to debate our problems and priorities and fashion solutions in peace at the ballot box. It withers when the power-hungry wield a deluge of lies and incite violence in order to subvert the people’s will.
We approach the anniversary of Jan. 6 insurrection — no tourist visit. And the lies that animated the assault still spread because so much power depends on keeping them alive, no matter how many times they are exposed for what they are.
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In the year since, as the Brennan Center for Justice, journalists and pundits have charted, election-gaming laws are being passed and partisan officials installed who could overturn an election result not to their liking. And what then?
The U.S. House Select Committee investigating Jan. 6 holds potential to return us to a shared understanding of reality and accountability. But other institutional guardrails promised the same yet faltered due to lack of fidelity by those sworn to uphold them.
Generations died to defend our way of life and defeat forces of oppression and hatred, it’s true. But God forbid anyone reach for an AR to solve this mess.
Out of many we are one. Let's stay with that truth, swap the rage for compassion (as we do in most other spheres of our lives) and just maybe see each other more clearly, as the president has said, as fellow Americans.
We likely don't face a happy year. But let it, and us, be new.
Viewpoint Director and Editorial Writer Lisa Thompson can be reached at lthompson@timesnews.com or 814-870-1802. Follow her on Twitter @ETNThompson.