The world is opening up. The sweet blossoms of spring have been edged out by the raucous blooms of early summer. My neighbor’s garden is filled with the brilliance of lipstick orange, hot pink, and in-your-face yellow. At the community gardens nearby, poppies, pink catchfly and coreopsis jostle for space and attention. And the effect is mind-boggling.
Our communities are opening up. The sidewalk tables on Main Street are filled. Shoppers are out and about. Many stores are still requesting masks, and despite what some say, this is a good thing.
Whether we pretend otherwise or not, this pandemic is still not behind us. Having spent weeks and weeks vaccinating people, it is all too clear to me that vaccine hesitancy is a huge issue. We haven’t reached herd immunity, and we won’t until more people agree to be vaccinated. It seems, however, that the more we open up, the more many people close down to the truth about the benefits and necessity of this.
So while we are opening up, some are shutting down their minds. This tendency to put blinders on when faced with complicated or inconvenient facts is a human tendency that is certainly not new. Somehow, it seems particularly prevalent this year and particularly dangerous, with respect to the pandemic, and so much more.
This blindness to the facts is flourishing among our state lawmakers. This is happening throughout the country, and New Hampshire is no exception. It had its start before the last election at the federal level and has now filtered down to the state level. Our elected officials have had every opportunity to hear the truth from their constituents, and indeed their constituents have been vocal and compelling in their requests for equality, fairness, justice, excellent public education, equitable access to services and promotion of free and fair elections which don’t suppress the ability of every citizen to vote. But a majority of lawmakers are turning a deaf ear and a blind eye. They are shutting down.
Now New Hampshire legislators have joined the ranks of those in a disheartening number of states who have ignored the voices of their citizens and passed a budget that is inadequate for funding the true needs of its citizens. Instead of shoring up public education, where New Hampshire already ranks 50th out of 50 in the state funding for the education of our young people, the budget dipped further into that inadequate bucket to encourage those who can go elsewhere to do so.
Instead of fairly taxing businesses and the wealthy, the budget lowered the business tax rate and again kicked the tax can down the road, further deepening the divide between property-rich and property-poor communities. Instead of tackling the climate crisis in any meaningful way, the budget made it easier for us to continue in our wasteful ways, and harder to do otherwise.
And our legislators had the gall to hide dangerous and unnecessary bills in this budget. Instead of leaving the painful decisions around the termination of a pregnancy where they belong (between the patient and her doctor) the budget contains a bill banning late-term abortions. This is a procedure done only in tragic situations where the death of the fetus has already occurred, death is inevitable because the fetus has anomalies incompatible with life or the pregnancy threatens the life of the mother. To threaten the physician with a felony and rob the grieving parents of their privacy does no good and has the potential for much harm, as Dr. Oge Young, a retired obstetrician, so eloquently pointed out (“The truth behind late abortions,” Monitor 6/24).
Similarly, legislators tucked a Trojan horse into the budget which has nothing to do with financing — a bill prohibiting the teaching of so-called “divisive concepts”. The major concept the sponsors evidently oppose is that racism and sexism have been problems since our country’s founding and remain problems today. I’m honestly perplexed what harm they believe they are protecting us from by prohibiting discussion of these issues. I think they would simply rather turn a blind eye. By suppressing the facts, we will only deepen the disparities among us in the future. The implications in education, healthcare and our criminal justice system of ignoring the truths about racism and sexism are profound.
I’ve gotten myself worked up just thinking about these issues. The contrast between the promise of opening up which this summer brings, and the dead-end of closing down and putting blinders on which is happening simultaneously is almost too much. We need to open up. We need to think critically. We need to see the big picture. There’s an incredible amount to see, which is great. Now is the time to see the amazing power of a garden full of crazy colors. We are like those colors. The surprise is that the whole is so much better than its parts. It would be a shame to turn a blind eye.
(Millie LaFontaine lives in Concord.)