The avoidance of drowning is not sailing.
“So now what?”
Never in memory has the news been so bad for so long. What makes the news so bad is less its practical consequences – so far – than what it says about ourselves. I find myself blinking, incredulous, “Are we the people really so despicable? So obnoxious, truthless, vindictive, silly, false, indifferent to suffering and freedom? I knew we were not angels – I’m not naïve – but so far below bestial?” Puppy Henry shares my incredulity and gives voice to it: What in blazes is wrong with the human race?
If I perseverate on this theme – and I do – it’s because I can’t shake my astonishment. My shock is not incidental, but fundamental; not political, but existential. If so many humans are so awful, a new approach is required for our keeping. Cobras and koalas call for different handling, zookeepers know.
So now what?
A happy quirk of my nature is aversion to gloom. Terrible things happen – predictably if we live long enough – but there’s no use dawdling in dismay. Up and at’em, Adam: pull up your socks: we’re here, alive, not going to shoot ourselves, so let’s make the best of it. This quirk served me well in my bumpy business career. The more perilous our predicament, the perkier my supervision. Yes, this was tactical – teammates needed bolstering – but also heartfelt. Emergencies underscore our human worth: all hands on deck. It’s inspiriting feeling needed.
It’s all hands on deck for humanity, as I see it, to forestall further slippage into brutal subjection. China, Russia, Hungary, and North Korea cannot represent a preferable future, as their thug overlords insist. Peaceful cohabitation and individual freedom are not a lost cause, I’m convinced, though they seem on life support. What can we the people do to preserve the privilege of self-determination?
The failure of my generation, now tottering into retirement, was to take our inheritance for granted. Heirs typically undervalue their forbears’ struggle to amass the family fortune. Immigrants tend to be more patriotic than natives, celebrating the advantages of our system instead of carping about its defects. Is America perfect? Hardly, it’s a work in progress, lamentable in many aspects. Is it preferable to any alternative? Churchill nailed it when he quipped, “Democracy is worst form of government, except for all the others.”
How to rekindle patriotism? The reelection of Trump might do it, but that cure’s worse than the disease. Barring that, which I think we will, how do we make ourselves better – more decent, considerate, responsible, just – for the government of a free people reflects who we are. We’ve been lazy and negligent about maintaining America. So now what?
We must wise up and speak up. Few believed what’s happening in America was conceivable. I sure didn’t. I mistook Trump for a repugnant joke, not the embodiment of our national character. He and his have been my life’s most gobsmacking shock.
Now we know. We the people are a disappointment but we’re not dead yet. We must make better choices, up our game, tolerate less silliness for democracy to survive. We must participate in self-governance, not gripe from the sidelines. We must acknowledge that if we’re horrified by America, it’s the fellow in the mirror we abhor.
Participating means serving, giving, teaching, preaching, screeching, and quit threatening to skedaddle in defeat. Cowards flee, relocating to New Zealand (if they can get a visa) – only, if America fails, there will be no safe havens for freedom, as tyrants swarm unopposed. November fifth must commence an arduous endless campaign to save America from ourselves.