In a famous speech delivered after a narrow defeat at the 1976 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan asked what people might be saying in the year 2076. Few of us could have foreseen the wild ride we are seeing less than 50 years later.
“Whether they have the freedoms that we have known up until now will depend on what we do here. Will they look back with appreciation and say, "Thank God for those people in 1976 who headed off that loss of freedom? … And if we failed they probably won’t get to read the letter at all because it spoke of individual freedom and they won’t be allowed to talk of that or read of it.”
No matter how glorious and celebrated our country and its history has been, we cannot possibly profess the idealism that used to define America, until somehow we find a way to reconciliation. We are a nation of immigrants that once gained strength through celebrating that very diversity. Now many are fighting to close our borders by separating families. The United States has had to overcome the very fact it’s made of imperfect and flawed humans. But without some deep changes very soon, our house is going to fall into the abyss.
Our toxic political discourse is a direct result of things relatively new to our national life. The day that the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine required broadcasters to air countervailing opinions, the door was opened to biased cable news outlets. Programming starved AM radio broadcasters turned to opinion-driven talk radio. And more fatally we have the incapacity of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to balance free speech with the enormous damage to trust and truth their revolution has brought.
Our divisive political culture is also a direct function of denial, of some choosing to bury the inconvenient truths of our past and present, while pretending everything is fine as long as their tribe is empowered. But we are miserable to one another over politics, We have allowed our fear, ego, hatred, and greed to get the best of us, under the guise of belonging to a political tribe. An entire industry has sprung up around keeping us laser-focused on our differences and keeping each other in the boxes that we check on a form, that we have lost sight of all the things we have in common and what it means to be one American Family, dysfunctional as it may be.
Without even discussing Tuesday's Presidential Election, it’s obvious the major political party leadership, Republican & Democratic alike, are NOT currently working with a goal of unity and/or finding solutions. Both in their way are serving a corporate-driven agenda that purposefully keeps the US apart. Meanwhile, the mainstream media and more crucially Facebook and Twitter continue to throw kerosene on the fires that are our collective pain and suffering (for profit). But don’t worry, their pharmaceutical advertisers have a cure for your anxiety! It will numb the pain, in fact, it will numb everything and you won’t have to care or feel at all. It’s such a small price to pay for freedom though, right?
There is no one coming to save us from ourselves, so that means we have to save ourselves. Our constitution authorizes only one sovereign, and that role belongs to “We the People”. After the last few years of national life, it’s obvious that If we don’t see love and light in the world of politics, then it is our obligation to fix that. If we don’t see justice, then it is upon us to fight for justice. If we don’t see peace in our streets, then we must individually be an example of peace. It’s time to take our agency back, to assume our individual and collective responsibility for the division. and to realize that we cannot fix the problems of today with the same thinking that was used to create them. It’s also time to expand our emotional intelligence so that we might break the toxic cycles of blame and historical anathemas that have left little room for solutions.
We owe it to ourselves and those who will inherit the future to create a solid foundation upon which to build a safe home for all Americans regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, political affiliation, religion, ability, and/or socioeconomic status. Though the past four years have certainly strained our nation's credibility in the world, the world is still watching and looking at the United States as the world’s only superpower to provide leadership. But our nation cannot fulfill that role by villainizing all those that are our would be, could be, and should be allies while cozying up to the evil dictators of the earth.
No matter what mixed emotions I have about the results announced today, it still moved me to see millions more Americans than ever voted before, brave a pandemic to vote and reaffirm our democracy. It’s a tribute to all those that have served and protected our freedoms over the years, and all the brave people who served and protected our health over the course of this year. We have a chance to assure that the answer to Reagan’s question from 1976 looks a lot more optimistic in the next few years than it does right now. Another quote from Reagan should resonate with us if we fail to do so.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
MANY BLESSINGS- NOEL
