“We need to fight isolation”

"…I read Anne Frank's diary when I was in high school in Minnesota and I still remember being stunned by 'In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.'

But then I have to google it to get what followed it: "I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

It still moves me, that a 15-year-old girl locked with her family in an attic in Amsterdam could write such a thing.

Here in America we're locked in our own attics of social media, isolation, working from home, driving the freeways. "People are good at heart" is the basis of civil democracy; it's what allows us to speak decently to those who disagree with us. And we feel this goodness when we walk down the street or go to a ball game or a Taylor Swift concert. We need to fight isolation with festivals, parades, public events, door-to-door campaigning..."

https://open.substack.com/pub/garrisonkeillor/p/what-endures-is-decency-believe-me?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post