It's not uncommon for people to frame history relative to their own experience, and I suppose I'm no different. US history isn't very well taught in school, let alone local or state history. Growing up in inner-city schools in Cleveland, especially during desegregation, exposed me to a lot of things I probably would not have learned in the suburbs, and I'm grateful for that foundation.
Being a Gen-X'er is interesting because our historical frame is so different from the generations before and after. Those before us knew war in a different way, and were witness to the civil rights movement. Those who came after didn't really know life before the Internet. We got to see top-40 radio at its best. We lived under the constant thread of nuclear annihilation, but also saw the Berlin wall come down. College education grew as a viable and meaningful way to transition to adulthood. The AIDS epidemic hit. We had a front row seat to the birth of the commercial Internet. Then 9/11 happened, just as we were figuring out adulthood. Years of war with little to no benefit ensued, but unlike wars that came before, this one had no draft, vague goals, and it cost more than all of our previous wars combined, adjusted for inflation. They were funded entirely by deficit spending. Meanwhile, a combination of private and public efforts made extraordinary advances in science and medicine. For awhile, we led the world in this way.
The preview for negative change started with the erosion of journalism, the fundamental means of keeping government accountable. The Internet broke local journalism entirely. Local newspapers, even if they did online right, struggled to survive. There wasn't much money online for the coverage of city council meetings and high school sports. At the national level, there was also a shift underway. I remember when the bombing began in Iraq, I was channel surfing through cable news channels. Fox News was showing a waving flag banner, which I read as taking a side, not reporting. People were dying, live on TV, and they were quite literally waving a flag. Suddenly the "news" that questioned the government was telling you not to question the government. I dismissed it as a fluke at the time. Surely the institution of the American press was not going to radically change.
But something changed specifically in 2008. It was subtle at first, and it had something to do with the election of a black man with a somewhat unusual name. Politics were always somewhat divisive, but the election of Barack Obama inspired a new divisiveness that we had not seen in our lifetime. People were already angry at the state of things, with the Great Recession, ongoing war and a housing crisis that persists today. The discontent among many Americans was rooted in the feeling of being unseen, of government not serving them. Fiscally, this was likely somewhat universal, but starting with the Tea Party folks, they saw an opportunity to leverage the discontent of a portion of that cohort through coded racism and culture wars. The same people that leaned into personal responsibility started acting as the victims, blaming people that were different for everything that ailed them.
So Americans decided they wanted change again, and you know how that went. The change came with a basic lack of decency and decorum, and the racism, antisemitism and xenophobia stopped being coded and started being blatant. We voted against our own self-interest again, and now, with a pointless war and inflation out of control, we have a government that tears down parts of the White House, obsesses about things that don't matter to regular folks, and we have a congress that let's it happen. Indeed, at this 250-year point, I wonder if we'll see 300. I don't recognize the country I live in. The vice president actually said that if Nixon were to commit his crimes today, it would be no big deal. That doesn't land the way he thinks it does.
Despite this, I remain optimistic. While the cult of personality suggests that embracing the contradictions in our history is unpatriotic, I argue the opposite. In fact, it's time to take patriotism back to mean something more than a campaign slogan. Many of our founding fathers were slave owners, yet the America that they wrote about celebrates its ability to improve. These were flawed men that sought a higher ideal. Continuous improvement was always the goal, because they knew that "all men created equal" didn't really mean "all men" at the time. The Constitution and the system that it lays out is meant to change, because the authors were self-aware enough to know that they couldn't get it right all at once.
We must also look to history to observe the causes of societal failure. Autocracies do not endure. Wealth inequality contributed to the end of the Roman Empire, third century China and the French monarchy. We are not infallible, and yet we seem willing to embrace these qualities for the moment. But again, our system allows for course correction, and there's evidence that we're headed in that direction.
Our nation was founded and built by immigrants. The vitriol pointed at the immigrants of today is misguided. Again, history shows that our greatest eras of prosperity happened during the heights of immigration. It has never come at the expense of those born here. They're historically less likely to commit crimes than those born here. And of course, more people mean a higher GDP that benefits everyone. It's just math.
We can't celebrate freedom without allowing for freedom of the press, health autonomy, the ability to vote without burden and the ability to move freely without fear of arrest for the color of our skin. These should not be controversial.
With two and a half centuries under our belt, we can be sure that we're only caretakers and stewards of this nation. We're ephemeral. The question is, what will people say about us when we're gone? Did we live up to the promise of America? It's not too late to make sure that we do.
No comments yet.