Were I an enemy of America, I’d be kvelling now.
Just look! A former President standing criminal trial for paying hush money to a prostitute – how cool is that! A Congress so childish and squabling it can’t agree to turn on the lights! Straight-faced arguments from some elected leaders that a violent raid on the seat of power was “peaceful protest”! A nice and effective President reviled because he’s “too old” or stutters! Inability to support a crucial ally against a monstrous neighbor’s invasion when a hefty majority of citizens believe we must! Denying females the right to terminate pregnancies, even if they’ve been raped as prepubescents! A gap yawning between the rich and the rest – like alligator jaws – for decades – while the rich scheme to pillage the poor! Savaging grade-school teachers for being – what? – “woke”! Removing classic books from libraries! Dizzying prosperity met by dismal scowls!
The list goes on. Proud Uncle Sam is a seedy bum in a doorway rattling a dented cup. Fortunate is unfortunate, right is wrong, good is bad in holier-than-thou richer-than-God made-in-the-USA! So toxic’s the social atmosphere than many younger voters – more than half, some say – deem democracy a mistake. Imagine! That the six hundred years since that human efflorescence we call the Renaissance deserve to be junked in favor of an erratic autocrat who’ll break heads to make sure this kindergarten pipes down and listens up! Moscow, Beijing, Budapest hoist flagons to their once omnipotent adversary’s collapse from within! Who needs to fight to defeat America, just wait for America to undo itself.
Skeptics have always questioned humans’ ability to govern ourselves, but more intensely since America commenced the experiment in 1776. Humans, unlike other creatures, weren’t smart enough to collaborate, coalesce, collude for their common defense, we needed a Big Daddy to smack us into cringing compliance. Yeh, humans were clever in our way, but not clever enough to preserve our habitat, speak truth, resist self-slaughter, or utter please and thanks! If America’s present gloom’s the upshot of freedom, return me to tyranny and bolt my cell!
I am grimed to be an American, ashamed, morose. It’s like having a beloved child turn mass-murderer: the higher the hopes (and America’s were sky-high), the more abysmal our despair. What came over us, we wonder, agog and aghast? What warning signs did we miss?
Two millennia later, historians still debate why Rome fell. No nation had ever been more powerful, prosperous, buttoned up; the pax Romana would endure till the end of time! And then, smash, it was all gone, and humans reverted to bestiality and chaos, surrendering civility and individual authority to the rule of thugs. The Dark Ages weren’t all dark, but few would trade them for the freer, more exuberant periods before and after. Granted, it's always good to be alive but sometimes it’s better.
Will America arrest its slide into the slough of despond? My crystal ball fell and cracked so it’s no longer legible. I used to know where we the people were headed: so what if I was wrong, my zest felt grand.
An early sign of recovery from insanity is awareness of one’s humiliation: Oh my God, I’m so embarrassed, what will people think! All Americans should consider how we appear to appalled observers. For more than a century, the fractious world counted on almighty America to keep it safe. Our overlordship, while far from perfect, was beneficent by and large, I’d like to think. Despots flinched and the world breathed easier while America stood guard. Who these days can count on America to do right?