Send It Packing [David’s blog on DR Thursday]

Posted on April 16, 2026 by davidrobinsoncreative

There’s lots of silverware sets in the antique stores. The felt cases are deteriorating, the silver tarnished. They come from another era, dare I suggest, another mindset. We moderns are more interested in the latest-new. Unlike our ancestors, we’ve grown up in a world of planned obsolescence. We do not expect our appliances to last. Our children – like us – are not interested in grandma’s good china or in the fine silver. There is no place for it to go so it inevitably lands in the antique mall.

We have a different relationship with time than did our ancestors. We have a different relationship with the stuff of our lives. We need not make things last or make things that are intended to last. Central to our day-to-day functionality is technology and it rapidly changes, it is out-of-date the moment it arrives on the scene. If we are to keep up, if we are to be relevant in our world, we need to be more fluid than our predecessors. Making stuff that lasts, durability, is no longer high on the priority list. Changeability is the necessity.

I hear these questions a lot lately: How is it possible that I didn’t know that? How is it possible that I do not know the full history of this nation? It’s a question I ask myself almost daily. Oligarchs aligning with fascists to erase democracy is not new to our era. White nationalism is a river that runs through all the pages of our history book. Sadly, our present turmoil is not new. We’ve been here before. My hope is that we see it for what it is and treat it like an old silverware set. My hope is that this is the last cycle, that we are the generation that sends it packing to the antique mall. We’re not interested in passing it down or enabling another go-round. We’d like our children to have a future free of the rotting relic of racism.

Changeability is the necessity. A democracy free of the ugly hubris of the morbidly wealthy, a democracy that thrives on equality, is necessarily fluid, ever growing and adapting with the diverse nation it upholds. There is no useful place in our nation-home for the tarnished mindset of maga-white-nationalism. It is a relic. Its case is deteriorating. It needs to go.